A mum says she was separated from her fiancé after being told by the Home Office she was not earning enough to allow him to come to the UK, despite showing evidence she was. Paige Jokovic, 28, and her now-husband Fatjon Ballmi, 27, were told Fatjon’s visa was refused because she did not meet the earning threshold.
The couple met at a party in 2016 while Fatjon was in the UK and now have a child together. They decided to apply for a partner visa so that Fatjon could stay with her permanently, and were told by the solicitor that he would need to go back to Albania while awaiting the decision. Meanwhile, Paige, from Enfield, had to find a way of getting her salary enough to sponsor him so she battled for a pay rise at work. Eventually she got the pay rise of £18,600 and then at her later job went onto earn £20,000.
But after her application got rejected on the basis of her not earning enough, she went into depression and even attempted to take her own life. Paige was left confused as she had proved she earned enough – however she later found out it was due to a missing payslip, as claimed by the Home Office.
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She said: “I was made to feel like I was not worthy of living, my rights in this country did not matter, I didn’t have anywhere else to go. I was severely depressed, and I didn’t eat for almost four months. My husband also suffered serious mental health issues but he was stuck in Albania.”
After multiple attempts at getting their case heard in court, Paige finally had a court date. She went to court in June 2018 but was surprised to see no one from the Home Office had turned up – the judge ruled in her favour and Fatjon was granted his visa.
Paige said: “It took the judge less than 10 minutes to decide that our application was right all along and allowed our appeal. I just could not stop crying.”
After this, Paige decided to complain about the whole process which left her with PTSD, in September 2018 she made a very detailed complaint about the costs incurred from their refusal which resulted into over £10,000, this included visits to Albania to see her fiancé.
But three weeks later the Home Office replied with an offer of £3,000 – despite saying: “The decision to refuse your husband’s visa was correct.” “They also said they looked through the file again and the payslip wasn’t there,” Paige added.
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Paige wanted answers so she decided to put in a Freedom of Information request in the hopes of getting back her documents and checking for the pay slip herself. In February 2020, she finally received her documents: “It included the missing payslip they claimed to have never laid eyes on,” she said.
She went on to continue her complaint, even getting an ombudsman involved to hold the Home Office accountable for refusing her fiancé’s visa and separating them for months. In paperwork seen by MyLondon, all of the payslips can be accounted for, which show Paige earned over the required £18,600 rule to apply for a spousal visa.
However, the Home Office claimed they had only received 12 payslips, meaning she only earned around £18,400. Since 2012, the government introduced a rule to allow partners of British citizens to come to the UK from a non-EU country if they earn more than £18,600.
Speaking to MyLondon, Paige said: “It seemed that our documents were lost, misplaced, or purposefully ignored, but we were unable to prove it.”
Paige added that her MP and solicitor had both sent the Home Office the missing pay slip as well – however the Home Office still said the decision to deny the visa was correct.
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In March 2021 when Paige received her original documents from her 2017 application, she found that the payslip was in the file. She then demanded the Home Office to give her £50,000 compensation for her suffering over the last five years.
At this point, she said she found out that the UK Visas and Immigrations office were conducting their own investigation into the documents and application, without notifying Paige. In April 2021, the ombudsman told Paige that UKVI have confirmed that their team are investigating and considering Paige’s compensation request of £50,000 and that they will be in touch once they have concluded how the wage slip came to be in their possession and reconsider their financial offer.
Finally, in May 2021, the UKVI Ex-Gratia team finally admitted they had made a mistake in the initial application and that the decision to refuse Fatjon was always incorrect. They offered Paige £1,000 and have refused to amend the amount offered.
Reflecting on the whole process, Paige said: “I still suffer from PTSD, depression anxiety, I don’t like being away from my husband, we were separated for just under a year, not a long time considering other families but I panic even when he goes to the toilet.”
MyLondon has contacted the Home Office for comment.
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