potential shipping nightmare

My reason for posting is twofold:

1.  To ask if anyone has ever had/heard of a problem with immigration with shipping their stuff

2.  For sympathy...

Our departure date is Sunday June 27th to move permanantly to the UK, I have packed almost everything, the company is paying the relocation.
 
Yesterday, my husband said,  'we may have to place our things in storage until the work permit (4-6 months) is final -  because immigration may question us bringing our stuff into the country while we are still not legal (he is worried they may confiscate everything), or we may just leave everything and go with essentials instead of paying for storage.
Don't you think 3 days is short notice for re-organizing boxes to take out essentials, and potentially never seeing your things again??!!
 

I'm confused.

Why are you moving now if the work permit could still take another 4-6 months to become final?  I mean, technically, you're NOT moving to the UK - you're visiting.  You do realise you only have 6 months to *visit* as well without any sort of visa?  What if the work permit takes longer?  And when your husband's work permit does come through, then you will all still have to apply for visas before entering on the basis of the work permit (the VAF1 application form).  And you will have to apply for that from the US.  A visa is permission to enter a country for a specific reason.  You can't apply for permission to enter a country if you are already in it - it has to be done prior to entry.

Maybe I don't know the whole story, though? 

... until the work permit (4-6 months) is final...

Tier 1 takes a few days; Tier 2 takes about 1 week if properly filed.  Bringing in a non-EU on a work permit takes 42 days if you start from square 1 with a newspaper advert and do everything by the book.  What sort of work permit would require 4 - 6 months to process? 

Jemima and Peedal, thank you for taking the time to give me that pertinent info, it is helping us ask the right questions and make the right decisions with his company and the relocation...

garry--What?!  I have no idea what the hold up is, then!!  It must be paperwork other than the work permit??  I have to ask.   

For you all, I will explain the rest:

We are going over there now because: our friend has a duplex that is empty (for us to stay in), my husband has a severence from his last job, I already filed the paperwork to work as a nurse in the UK, and we thought we would travel around and get to know the place and some of Europe before we started working. 


We already have our tickets to come back to the US, for a month, mid-Sept.  I guess we never thought it could be considered 'illegal'  to ship our stuff ahead of time. 

We are putting our stuff in storage, anyway, while we travel, I guess we'll be living more out of our suitcases for the next couple months!!

I understand better now!

I think Jemima will agree that we just hate to see people doing things in a way that could be setting themselves up for a fall, just because they don't know all the legalities of the situation.

Just remember that you will have to apply for the visas after the work permit paperwork is to hand - and that has to be done from the US.

Glad we've been of some help!

So shipping things before you leave on a fiance or spousal visa is fine, but one could not ship things if planning to go on just a visa waiver? Theat would make them suspect why you were sending belongings?