Investors (INF 11) Visa

Has anyone here done an investor's visa? This is our situation: My girlfriend and I have been together for 9 yrs. Living together 8 1/2 of these years. We are both from the states. I am 30, she is 33. We both love England, have stayed there on holiday numerous times, and for a brief period I lived in Italy when I went to school years ago. We both miss England a great deal. (There are also other reasons that we would like to stay in the UK, won't go into them now  ) We would like to permanently reside in the UK.  I have read the rules on the Investor Visa and see that it would be doable. We need to invest 750,000GB and that isn't a problem. I just wanted to know if anyone else had done that. Also, would anyone be willing to suggest other ways of legally obtaining a Visa? I want to do this right. We had thought of a Tourist and then filing for a extended stay thing, but don't know if that would be a very good route. We aren't running from any tax thing here, we want this to be legal.

The other thing is the same-sex relationship. As neither of us are British can we come to the country to get married and then wish to stay?

Sorry for such a long post, but I'm just wanting to know what anyone thinks on this.  

i hope this link works -

http://www.workpermit.com/uk/hsmp_calculator.htm?PHPSESSID=639771a3631f52981d9eaefa0f4a281b

have you checked out the highly skilled migrant program?  If you and your partner have enough educational qualifications, work experience, and investing power you can qualify as a highly skilled migrant.

best of luck!

What a great link!
(Sorry Ozz, I don't have any experience in what you're asking about...but it does confound me how easy it is for a celeb to settle here, so I think they must have done it on the money card.)

Yeah I can hardly see Madonna standing around in NY waiting for her Fiancee visa, somehow! lol.

LisaE and MarsBar~ I was thinking the same thing. LOL. I don't want that to be a bad thing. We have done a lot of searching and found that the UK is the best place for our needs.

Lou~ truly I can't come over on the HSMP. I did graduate from college, but can't say that I've ever held a senior position. I really don't think that we're going for any outstanding jobs either. We definately won't be living off the UK gov for money, we'll have plenty of our own.

I should have stayed in Italy when I had the chance, but then I wouldn't have met Lisa...We are meeting with a Lawyer that specializes in Immigration in the next 2 weeks. They should be able to tell us what we need to do. I still think that the investor visa is going to be the way to go.