UK Immigration: Impact of excessive single-trip absence (pandemic &amp; personal situation) on future Indefinite leave to remain application
<p>My wife intends to apply for UK Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) in Sep 2024 (10-year long residence route). However, there has been a recent big break in her stay in the UK due to personal &amp; pandemic reasons.</p>
<p>She departed UK on <strong>05 Feb 2020</strong> to home country, India, to spend time with family due to miscarriage after fertility treatment. She intended to return to the UK after 59 days around early April 2020.</p>
<p>Quite unexpectedly, both India &amp; UK went into pandemic lockdowns in Mar 2020. India has since suspended all scheduled international passenger flights indefinitely. Since Aug 2020, India has been running a repatriation flight program over several phases, but is not intended as a form of regular/scheduled passenger flight.</p>
<p>As for me, I was stuck in the UK since Feb 05, 2020 &amp; could travel to India only in Nov 2020. I intended to spend 3-4 months in India, spending time with elderly family there. In April 2021, India was put on the UK's red list, and both my wife &amp; I scrambled back somehow to return to the UK on May 09, 2021.</p>
<p>So, there exists a single-trip absence of <strong>459 days</strong>. As per UKVI rules, in normal circumstances, this breaks the continuous residence requirements for the 10-year LR route (wherein a single absence should not exceed 180 days).</p>
<p>However, I infer some possible exemptions through clauses CR2.3 (b) &amp; (c) of the UKVI immigration rules: <a href="https://www.gov.uk/guidance/immigration-rules/immigration-rules-appendix-continuous-residence" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.gov.uk/guidance/immigration-rules/immigration-rules-appendix-continuous-residence</a></p>
<p>Will UKVI allow a concession for this specific situation? We have the NHS doctor's note for the miscarriage &amp; fertility treatment,  while pandemic-related travel disruptions are well known (and I presume no additional documentation is required).</p>

<p><strong>Will UKVI allow a concession for this specific situation?</strong></p>
<p>Only your wife's UKVI caseworker can definitely answer this with any certainty, but as you say CR2.3 (b) does seem quite compelling but  (c) less so - unless the medical records support her condition was &quot;life-threatening&quot;</p>
<blockquote>
<p>...any period spent outside the UK will not count towards the 180-day limit if the absence was for any of the following reasons:</p>
<p>[...]</p>
<ul>
<li><p>(b) travel disruption due to natural disaster, military conflict or <strong>pandemic</strong>; or</p>
</li>
<li><p>(c) compelling and compassionate personal circumstances, such as the life-threatening illness of the applicant, or life-threatening illness or death of a close family member;</p>
</li>
</ul>
<p>[...]</p>
</blockquote>

united-kingdom immigration