London or California? Early stage planning

Hello! We are a new transatlantic couple, discovering that Immigration Is Hard. And that Change Is Scary. This is early days of possible planning and research. Advice and opinions very much welcome.

I am Bat, I am 36, a UK citizen and a scientist. My life is pretty much my job which is tied down to my London academic institution. My parents and almost all of my friends are around London and I have lived in southeastern UK for 25 years. Given the choice I would prefer not to move permanently – although I could.

Karen is Californian, she is 52, an engineer, divorced with a daughter who is 12. She has never lived outside the US, most of her life in CA, and has a whole life’s worth of people and things (workshop and bikes and motorbikes and cars and building things) in CA. She is bored of her job and ready to find a new career.

We have known each other for seven years through friends and got together a few months ago. I made a brief visit to USA for work in August, then Karen spent two weeks in London in October, and now I am in CA for an extended holiday break.

Scenario 1: Karen moves, we live in my London flat at least to start with (cheap), she looks for possible new careers (difficult). I would love it if her daughter would move too and we are not sure how possible that would be yet. Seeing Karen leave everything would be difficult.

Scenario 2: I leave my job and move to CA. I have never previously been keen on leaving the UK but would consider it. My job would likely let me have a year’s unpaid career break and there is a CA institution that could give me a temporary base as a research associate. It could even turn out to be a good thing for my career.

Ideally we would want to try 6-12 months in London and 6-12 months in California and think about it and decide, perhaps including getting married somewhere along the process. And maybe eventually spending periods of time in both countries. Is that even possible? The visa system seems impenetrably complicated and I am not sure where to start given we are not even sure which direction the immigration process would eventually go in. With apologies for the vague and undecided nature of this post. Would like to think about this and do it right (and ideally reversibly should it all go horribly bad). Your thoughts and links to reading matter appreciated.

Welcome to the forum and good luck with your plans .

I think your main deciding factors for which path to take will need to revolve around your visa options, cost and timescales.

There is no visa for either country that just allows you to live together for a bit to try it out and see which country you like best (there's no 'let's shack up' visa, as we call it here on the forum ).

In order to qualify for a visa to move to either the US or the UK based on your relationship, you're going to need to get married - either before you apply for any visas, or there are 'fiance' visas that allow you to marry within a certain number of days or months and then switch to a spousal visa after the wedding.

Moving to the UK

- Karen and her daughter will both need settlement (family) visas to move to the UK
- in order to qualify for the visas, you must meet a minimum income requirement of £22,400 per year, which you must have been earning for at least 6 months before the visa applications are filed
- the visa applications filed in the US can take anywhere from a few days (if you pay $565 per application for priority processing) to a couple of months to be processed

There are two possible visa options:

Fiance visa
- valid for 6 months
- costs £956 per visa, so £1,912 for both Karen and her daughter
- you must marry within those 6 months (and show plans to marry in the visa application, such as a provisional ceremony booking)
- no work or study is allowed on the visa
- no NHS access is allowed, so they will both need private insurance
- once you are married in the UK, Karen and her daughter will need to switch to FLR(M) visas to stay in the UK
- the FLR(M) visa is valid for 30 months
- each FLR(M) visa costs £649 (though this will increase in April) plus £500 NHS levy
- the FLR(M) visa can take anywhere up to a few months to be processed by post, or you can pay an extra £400 per application for in-person, same-day processing
- the FLR(M) visa allows work, study and NHS access

Total visa cost for fiance visas and FLR(M) visas: £4,210, not including faster priority processing (currently $565 each) or in-person processing of FLR(M) (£400 each)

Spousal visa
- you marry in the US while you are there (or another country)
- once you are married, Karen and her daughter can apply for spousal/child dependant visas to move to the UK
- the visas are valid for 33 months and cost £956 + £600 NHS levy per person
- the visas allow work, study and NHS access

Total visa cost for spousal/child dependant visas: £3,112, not including priority processing ($565 each)

See here for information on the visas and how to apply:
https://www.gov.uk/join-family-in-uk/overview

_________________________________________________ ____________

Moving to the US
- the US visa process is a bit more straightforward and the visa is cheaper
- however, it's a much longer process and it takes at least 6 months, with an average of 8-10 months, for the visa to be processed (compared to a few days/few weeks for UK visas)
- as with the UK visas, there is the fiance or spousal visa option

US Fiance visa (K1 visa)
- allows you to come to the US within 6 months of the visa being issued
- you must marry within 90 days of entering the US on the fiance visa
- the visa costs $265
- to apply for the visa, Karen will need to be earning at least 125% of the poverty level
- she will first need to file a petition to sponsor a visa in the US (takes about 4 months to be approved), then you will need to attend interviews and medical exams at the US embassy in London (another few months in total)
- once you are in the US and married, you then apply to adjust your status to a spouse of a US citizen, which will be conditional for the first 2 years

US Spousal visa (K3)
- Same process and I believe it's the same cost as a fiance visa, though there may also be USCIS fees
- If you have been married for less than 2 years, you will be given a conditional resident visa (CR) status and will have to apply to remove the conditional status 90 days before the 2-year anniversary of you entering the US on the visa

See here for information on the visas and how to apply:
http://london.usembassy.gov/mobile/immigrant-visas/marriage-to-a-u.s.-citizen.html

_________________________________________________ ___________

So, those are the basics of the visa options based on your relationship

Essentially, the UK visas are quicker to be processed (some people recently got their visas in less than 2 weeks using priority processing), but more expensive and have more requirements, while the US visas are easier to qualify for and much less expensive, but take several months to be processed and issued (so you should start the application process about 10 months before you wish to move).

Other visa options, if the relationship/marriage visas are not suitable, would be a student visa to study in the US or the UK, or a company-sponsored work visa... but student visas are expensive (you need full tuition and living costs available) and work visas can be extremely difficult to qualify for.

Wow thank you! I really appreciate you putting in so much time to give us all this information. And OMG, that will take a while to digest. On first glance it is looking possible in terms of money and timescales.

Hope you do not mind me asking what might seem like a very ignorant question. An academic institution in California say they might be willing to invite me over on a J1 visa as an unpaid Research Associate, perhaps for one year, and it seems like this could give me time to think and test it out before getting married - would that be at all contrary to the marriage settlement process? And the other way round and it is tempting to invite Karen to London for 4-6 months without any sort of special visa, and she would be a temporary visitor making contacts and not getting married or seeking to start immediate employment (similarly to my current 4-week stay in CA on the visa waiver). Would that be against immigration expectations and get us into trouble later?

I do not wish to cheat the system in any way; at the same time figuring out how much leeway the system would give us legally could allow more flexibility in the early stages. I hope With thanks again!

Only the two of you can decide what is best in your circumstance, but I would encourage Karen to really think about how the move will affect her daughter.  I think it would be extremely tough to make the switch from the US system to the UK system at that age.  And teenage girl are fun WITHOUT a huge life change.      She may seriously want to include the cost of continuing education at an American school versus a UK state school to help her daughter transition.

Also remember the child's father will need to agree to the move.

Wow thank you! I really appreciate you putting in so much time to give us all this information. And OMG, that will take a while to digest. On first glance it is looking possible in terms of money and timescales.

Yeah, it's definitely possible if you can meet the financial requirements, it's just a case of doing some research about the various visa options and working out what will work best for you both personally and financially.

Hope you do not mind me asking what might seem like a very ignorant question. An academic institution in California say they might be willing to invite me over on a J1 visa as an unpaid Research Associate, perhaps for one year, and it seems like this could give me time to think and test it out before getting married - would that be at all contrary to the marriage settlement process?

That would probably be fine in terms of going over to the US - I studied in the US for a year on a J1 visa back in 2003/04 and it's a pretty simple process.

The only major issue that I could see would be if you wanted Karen and her daughter to come over to the UK on a fiance or spousal visa after that... because if you were working unpaid in the US, you wouldn't meet the financial requirement to sponsor them for UK visas... so you would have to go back to the UK and work for 6 months in a job paying £22,400 or more before they could apply for visas to move to the UK.

And the other way round and it is tempting to invite Karen to London for 4-6 months without any sort of special visa, and she would be a temporary visitor making contacts and not getting married or seeking to start immediate employment (similarly to my current 4-week stay in CA on the visa waiver). Would that be against immigration expectations and get us into trouble later?

You'd have to be careful with that because she would need to be able to show:
- that she had no intention of living in the UK
- that she was a genuine tourist and not trying to use the visitor visa to 'live' with you in the UK
- that she has an ongoing job and home back in the US that she MUST return to by a certain date
- that she will not undertake any kind of work activity in the UK, including unpaid volunteer work or any online remote work for her US company
- that she has travel/health insurance to cover her while she is in the UK
Also, if her daughter were to come as well, she wouldn't be able to attend school or use the NHS as a visitor either.

Just curious  to know where in CA you want to live..My british DH works for an international company here and although he makes 'good money" on paper... we are very skint here and barely have the basics  it feels like...   technology is way more expensive here as well..  we had a three bdrm house in the UK with a garden  and  access to  public transport  quite easily...and now  live in a two bedroom apartment.. no yard..one car..

I would probably be in Oakland if I move - but hoping I might be able to get a better salary over there too! Interesting that you are finding things more expensive in CA - most people seem to say the standard of living is lower in the UK (but I am a Londoner so accommodation is not great here either).