# Permanent or Temporary Residence?



## felix777 (Apr 7, 2014)

I have a few questions which I am hoping someone can answer ... 

Background. I am South African (with dual UK citizenship - applied for permission to retain SA citizenship) my husband is British and we have a baby with dual citizenship too. He has both a UK & SA passport. 

We lived in SA before and applied for a spouse visa but it was an absolute nightmare as he entered SA with no visa and we had to do it all that side. This time round we would like to sort the visa out before going to SA. I think the laws have recently changed anyways so you are not allowed to do it the way we did before?

We are tempted to go the PR route but we ideally want to move to SA at the end of this year and do not want to wait the minimum 18 months for PR.

Does TR give you the same rights to work as PR? Is it worth just waiting it out, applying for PR hopefully getting this and really delaying our plans to move to SA?

Can you apply for both PR and TR at the same time?

Lastly, I am thinking of hiring a Lawyer to handle all this but not sure what the benefit will be? I am pretty confident submitting applications as I have done this on both the UK and SA side (I'm South African and my husband is British and we have lived in both countries so done the visa process on both sides) so I don't see any benefit in them compiling my application and relevant docs and submitting as I can do this myself but can I lawyer speed up the process in any way?


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## LegalMan (Dec 26, 2012)

The obviousness of using a South African (not foreign qualified) immigration (not other) lawyer is that your risk of success (but not timing) is reduced to essentially zero. If something goes wrong, you are stuck in a bad way. An immigration application is a legal process.

Your husband can apply directly for PR through your SA son. You will need a TR permit while waiting for your PR outcome.

If you use a legal service, they should be able to fast track your application by means of a court order once Home Affairs has taken longer than the legal 30 days. However, this will endure a further (hefty) cost. Usually then you have PR in 3-4 months.


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## felix777 (Apr 7, 2014)

LegalMan said:


> The obviousness of using a South African (not foreign qualified) immigration (not other) lawyer is that your risk of success (but not timing) is reduced to essentially zero. If something goes wrong, you are stuck in a bad way. An immigration application is a legal process.
> 
> Your husband can apply directly for PR through your SA son. You will need a TR permit while waiting for your PR outcome.
> 
> If you use a legal service, they should be able to fast track your application by means of a court order once Home Affairs has taken longer than the legal 30 days. However, this will endure a further (hefty) cost. Usually then you have PR in 3-4 months.


Thank you for your reply. 

So if I am in London can I get a legal service in SA to handle it? 

Would the best process for us be to apply for TR here in London and then apply for PR through a legal service as soon as we get to SA? 

Also with regards to the TR giving you the right to work but needing an endorsement, would a legal service be able to speed this up in any way? This is our greatest worry really, getting there and my husband not being able to start work straight away due to waiting for the endorsement. 

With PR do you still need to apply for the work endorsements or are you free to work and change jobs without it?


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## LegalMan (Dec 26, 2012)

> So if I am in London can I get a legal service in SA to handle it?


Yes.



> Would the best process for us be to apply for TR here in London and then apply for PR through a legal service as soon as we get to SA?


Yes, probably..



> Also with regards to the TR giving you the right to work but needing an endorsement, would a legal service be able to speed this up in any way? This is our greatest worry really, getting there and my husband not being able to start work straight away due to waiting for the endorsement.


Most probably yes.



> With PR do you still need to apply for the work endorsements or are you free to work and change jobs without it?


With PR you can do anything a South African can do, except vote. So yes, you can work and change jobs as often as you like.


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