Understanding residence question in UK Visa application

It is where you reside usually. Some theoretical discussions can be found at e.g. Canadian government's report on residence in Canadian family law context, but in the end you should not overthink it and interpret it "ordinarily" (which is what the government expects from you).

It is in the present tense, the first qualification has to be somewhere you can still be considered to be a resident of. An immigrant who just landed in Canada for permanent residence can claim Canada as their usual residence on the day of their landing and cannot claim their country of origin if they have no intention of returning to their country of origin any time soon (no, it is not well defined, but it does not matter for most people; for the judge, it will be I know it when I see it.).

The modifiers "usual", "habitual", "ordinary" serve to reduce the choices when your current residence may be exceptional. A worker in an offshore oil platform would claim where they usually reside onshore as their residence. An edge case could be when the worker stays at hotels or other short term residence providers in different countries while off work, then the worker has to decide on one and be prepared to justify his claim.

However, the usual residence does not have to be an exclusive concept (unlike domicile). It is likely that frontier worker in Switzerland who only lives in France on the weekends (due to Swiss legal requirements) can reasonably claim both Switzerland and France as their ordinary residence (but only France as their domicile) under common law. Similarly, a detached worker or diplomats on assignment may claim multiple countries of "usual" residence.

An exchange student likely does not claim their current country of study as usual residence, whereas a student taking a degree program with longer duration may be able to claim both country of study and the country where their family reside or where they have right of abode as their usual residence.

To make it clear that questions such as the above don't fully clarify which country I should answer. My answers are: I don't own, I rent in say country A. I have a job country A but obviously my employement in my current country will end because I will be moving and working in the UK after my successful visa application. And again my majority of possesions are in one country (to be moved to the UK). Three years before this the answer to all questions was Country B. Four years before that it was country C which is my country of origin.

In your situation, country A is mostly likely your current usual residence. The concept of residence does not depend on past actions or future intent; except with the modifier "usual" exceptions exist if you do not consider your current situation usual. Country A is where you currently live, eat and sleep.

Country C as my usual country of residence since it is the country I have the closest ties with (despite not having lived there for the last 7 years).

While country C is not necessarily disqualified from your usual country of residence, it is hard to justify. 7 years is a long time; if you obtained a PhD during that time, you may still be able to justify country C as where you would usually reside except for your pursuit of studies; similarly you may be able to justify the claim if you are sent overseas by an employer or the government in country C.

If you have been in country A in 7 years, claiming country A would also usually help with your application (not necessarily in the case of UK today), since a significant part of your recent personal history is in A, and you would get better treatment if your file is processed by an office familiar with conditions and documents in A.

Where is your main residence and where are you registered to pay tax. Normally these will be one and the same and is the answer they are looking for.

Details for qualification as a resident may vary slightly from country to country.

Please note THERE IS A DIFFRENCE BETWEEN RRESIDENT AND CITIZENSHIP, also

1.Renting or owning a house is not relevant. Where you reside is the relevant factor.

2.The country of registration of your company or employers company is not relevant to you being a resident but it may be relevant to the qualification for residency.

3.What you posses or where those possesion are is not relevant to your place of residence. It may be relevant to citizenship but not residency.

4.You cannot be a resident until you have lived in a country for a defined period of time, so the fact you may be relocating is not relevant at this time.

5.Your country of origin or places of previous abode are irrelevant unless you meet the requirements of being a domiciled resident at the current time.

I doubt there is a hard and simple rule here. If you lived in Country A for 50 years, and then moved to Country B where you lived for 20 years, I don't think you'd like it if someone said Country B wasn't your usual country of residence just because you hadn't caught up to the time you spent in Country A yet. But if you own a house and have a pet and such in one country and just landed in a second country this morning, I would not believe you when you claimed your usual residence was that second country.

I would ask you questions like these:

• do you own a place to live (house, apartment etc)? Where?
• do you have a job that requires you to be at a workplace or are you a student who needs to attend class? Where?
• where are the majority of your possessions?

For most people, the answers to these are all the same place, even if it's a place they've only recently moved to. But a lot of this depends on your personal feelings. You may feel that Country C is home and where you usually live, even if you are in Country D for work or school for a few years. You can probably defend almost any answer to this question. There may exist a weird edge case person who is a citizen of E, lived in F for decades, owns property in G, sleeps each night in H, works most days in I, and has a strong attachment to J even though they only get there a few times a year. What's their usual country of residence? They might be able to claim any of those, depending on how they feel about it.

We have seen some questions here from people who can't get visas because they don't have enough status in their country of habitual residence. So it might be advantageous to say your country of usual residence is one where you're a citizen, if that's a true claim to be making.