Immigration Advice Service | Immigration lawyers Belfast

We have just completed my husbands spousal visa extension and had the pleasure of having Liam Gallagher as our case worker. He was absolutely fantastic. Throughout what is a very stressful process he made us feel at ease, was really responsive to any questions that we had and when we needed a letter proving we were going through the visa renewal process he had it sent over to us less than 30 minutes later. We will definitely be using Immigration Advice Service for the Indefinite leave to remain application!

£150 to give advice. The advice was to keep trying to book through vfs. I seemed to know more about the visa process than the adviser. She did not know irish passport holders from northern ireland are eu citizens. £700 for document check, £1500 for full application...with no guarantee. for what is essentially a **free** eu partner visa. you must fill out the application, do all the document collection yourself, book your own vfs slot (if available but they are never available) travel to Edinburgh at short notice and hope that vfs dont take advantage of you. The whole schengen visa process seems to be a money scam.

Do not use this service! A complete waste of £200. I was seeking advice on travelling to Australia but I have a pre existing health condition so I was advised to get an immigration lawyer. I contacted IAS and had a conversation fully explaining what I was looking for and was reassured that this was something they could help me with. I received an email detailing the services that would be available and booked an appointment. A consultant called Ojo emailed me about organising an appointment time and then took a further 16 days of back and forward emailing to organise an appointment even though I have a wide variety of times I was available. I explained everything to him and he responded very positively saying that he seen no reason why this couldn’t be resolved. I continued to ask questions repeating the fact of a reciprocal health care agreement between Aus. and the uk that a treatment I need may be covered under. After getting dull responses he eventually snapped at me asking why I kept going on about getting free health care and how that didn’t make sense to him at all. The call came to an end and as stated in the service email previously received I was meant to get a “confirmed in writing” response stating in detail everything that was talked about. I received an email with 3 insurance company links, one of which is for students which he knew I was not, one does not deal with people with pre existing health conditions at all and the other doesn’t deal with pre existing conditions for the first 12 months unless my treatment comes under the reciprocal health agreement, which he had snapped at me and said that something like that makes no sense. Bar the fact that it would cost me more money I would seek legal advice regarding the service I got. Appalling.

The IAS is nothing more than a sprat to bait larger fish. The initial advice charge (mine of £150) is made quite clear on their online communication and email, but they deliberately fail to make clear that a further amount (£700 in my case) will be required to convert their advice into practical assistance in applying for a visa or permit. If only they made this crystal clear in their advertising, particularly as prospective clients may well be in a state of panic due to their insecure immigration status. (I was cut- off by one of their team when I highlighted the case of those who may be). I have requested a refund from them as I paid by credit card. Please be aware of this company - particularly if you are emotionally and/or financially vulnerable.

I'll keep this short- For the most part my calls, emails and thus questions/concerns were not answered. It took a long time for a lawyer to be assigned to our case. We had minimal interaction and never heard back from them again. This all added to the stress, uncertainty and expense of making a visa application. I would not recommend.