UK Standard Visitor visa refusal: what went wrong?

Note the wording: “not satisfied” doesn’t necesarily mean that the official thinks you are lying. It means that he finds the evidence in your application to be insufficient. The officer is required by law to make certain presumptions about each applicant, and it is up to the applicant to submit evidence to overcome those presumptions. The evidence may be insufficient for any of a number of reasons, most of which do not involve deception.

Based upon the text of your husband’s refusal notice, I think the Entry Clearance Officer (ECO) made a good call. Your husband failed to qualify because he could not support his claims to having economic ties to Nigeria. The ECO did not make a personal attack on your husband as you suggest; all an ECO does is react to what’s laid before him and nothing more (except for the country’s risk index).

It is down to the applicant to show that they own the funds they claim to have and that their income is stable and lawful. Based upon all that’s written, your text and the ECO’s text, it looks like your husband was paid off-book, cash-in-hand. No salary slips, no traceable deposits, not his company, not even his bank account. They will never approve an application with that kind of optics.

For the questions you have asked…

Why wasn’t this confirmed instead of suggesting he is lying or something negative?

A British ECO posted to Abuja is required to process 32 visitor applications a day, that’s not a lot of time and hence applications need to be really good. Before the application arrives at his desk, it is checked out by an assistant (in your husband’s case, a Nigerian national hired locally) who matches up the evidence to the rules and checks for forged documents. That is the level of confirmation your husband’s application received at that stage.

At the decision-making stage, the ECO can ask for one or two additional documents if he thinks doing so will salvage the application and prevent a refusal. He decided that additional documents would not help, probably because the other pieces of evidence were a receipt for online goods (useless evidence) and the unprovenanced funds (useless evidence). The ECO probably concluded that in order to salvage the application, the entire body of financial evidence needed to be replaced, and that’s tantamount to making a fresh application.

Further, are confirmation of documents (statements, letters) no longer done?

Actually, they were never done in the case of visitor applications in Nigeria. So the ‘no longer done’ part assumes something else, some other place? or maybe work permit applications? It’s a poor assumption, they are not supposed to chase (except as explained above); it’s not fair to the other applicants. And well-seasoned advice says ‘never leave an Entry Clearance Officer with an ambiguous case that needs something clarified because they will use it to refuse’. It’s in their training to be like that; if they don’t do that, they get into serious trouble.

What really was the objective reason for the rejection?

The ‘objective reason’ is that your husband did not successfully discharge his onus of proof. The rules say that the applicant needs to prove their case and your husband’s evidence was in serious default. That’s what the refusal notice is telling you. You left out the final paragraphs of the letter where this is stated explicitly, but the text would make a reference to the exact hit(s) in Appendix V of the rules.

Why is it that genuine visa applicants are rejected and reasons given suggest that the applicant is either dishonest or has ulterior motives.

I did not see text suggesting that your husband is dishonest. Lots and lots of refusal notices issued by Ajuba speak of forgery or performance issues or credibility problems and none of that language was in the text you provided.

For the ‘ulterior motives’ part, it’s basically true. They use a so-called ‘risk index’ prepared by the risk assessment unit at the British mission in Lagos. The index is a composite measure of how all Nigerian nationals have performed when they had a visa, and it can be tough to overcome in individual cases. To counter that problem, 35% of refusals issued by Abuja are sent to the higher ups for analysis to assure that the decision-making process is fair and objective. Some of the refusals are overturned outright. In some cases the applicant is invited to apply again for free. And about 98% of the time the refusal will stand.

About 45% of visitor applications submitted to the Abuja post are refused. Almost half. You are in a position to be at least marginally aware of the high refusal rate and the need for Nigerian applicants to be especially diligent.

Is there any need reapplying?

Your husband will need to make a fresh application. There are no alternative appeal or review paths available.

If yes, what could change?

Based upon all the information you have provided, your husband will need to get a proper bank account and start making regular deposits that tie out with his salary slips. You did not include ALL of the relevant text, so not much more than that can be written here.

Thirdly, what is the time interval for new application after rejection?

If you are asking if there is a cooling off period, no there isn’t. Your husband can make a fresh application right now. If he uses the same evidence they will refuse again and matters will be worse.

If you are asking how long it takes them to reach a decision for an application with a previous refusal, your husband’s next application will fall into the ‘non-straightforward’ category and the average time for those is 3 weeks with a maximum of 12 weeks.

Also, wouldn’t this rejection affect future visa applications to other countries when needed?

There is no way to tell. The UK is part of an agreement to share refusal information with the USA and affluent Commonwealth members. But those places do not tell us if they use the information in a pejorative way or not.

Also, he is a first time applicant to UK. I do not know if this plays a major role in making decisions.

It may have worked against your husband. They like it if an applicant has lots of previous travel and demonstrates familiarity with the sorts of things ECO’s need in order to reach a favourable decision. Your being in the UK on a student visa also didn’t help much either IMHO.

Further research: A comparative inspection of the UK Border Agency visa sections that process applications submitted in Africa : Nairobi, Abuja, Pretoria and
the UK Visa Section.