UK visa refusal. Whom can I escalate the issue to?

Upvote:3

This does not help with the immediate problem, but you may be able to fix it in the long term.

The core problem is that you, your family, and the domestic worker are all used to her doing certain jobs. Staying together at an Airbnb creates a risk that you will drop into that habitual pattern. You need positive evidence that her travel is a bonus, not a case of continuing to work for you during the trip.

For your next few vacations, send your domestic helper on a separate tour or cruise, or to visit family. If she picks her own destination, you will accumulate evidence that her travel during your vacations is a bonus, not a case of her continuing to work during the vacation. For this purpose, prior trips she has taken with you are not good evidence - there is no way for the immigration official to know whether she was working at all.

If you try to bring her with you to the UK again, also make sure you have proof of how the domestic work is going to get done without her doing any of it. You could stay at a hotel in rooms without a kitchen, so the hotel staff will do the cleaning and you will obviously be eating out or ordering prepared food. If you stay at an Airbnb or similar, hire someone local to do the cleaning, laundry etc. that your domestic worker does at home, and include their contract in the application.

Upvote:10

There is generally no appeals process for a Standard Visitor Visa. This isn't a situation where there's a department head you can write and get a different result. The options are to apply again, appeal on human rights grounds, or go to court. For the latter two, you'd want a qualified UK immigration lawyer to represent you, and you'd have to identify some grounds beyond not liking the decision for what would be expensive and lengthy proceedings.

I realize you are aggrieved by this, and I sympathize. I will trust that you are a lovely person who wants to give this gift of a vacation to someone you have become close to and that you do not expect her to work in any way. However, it is the ECO's job to assess the credibility of applications. ECO's don't always get it right, but they're not expected to be perfect, but rather to make judgements. They asked themselves "which is more likely: an employer flying their domestic helper half-way across the world because they're very nice, or because they expect them to work?" Unfortunately, The ECO believed the latter, and it's hard to imagine what kind of evidence of your intentions you can supply to overcome that belief.

As the ECO advises, the Overseas Domestic Worker visa, while expensive, will get around this problem, because you won't have to convince anybody that no work will be performed. You haven't told us why that application was rejected, but I would carefully read the refusal notice, the instructions, and perhaps the internal guidance the ECO used to review your application. You could post that refusal notice as a new question here, if you'd like people to take a look at it.

You also have the option to hire a UK immigration lawyer to look at your case and assist in preparing a new application. In the case of multiple refusals, that can be the best path forward if you want to continue to pursue this, so as to avoid looking desperate with an escalating series of failed applications.

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