What's the first step

My wife and have talked about how cool it would be to move to the UK but I'm not sure where to start. For starters, I'm a maintenance technician for the cable company and my wife is a nurse so a work transfer isn't possible. I was looking at Virgin Media and it sounds to be the same as my curent line of work. My wife, being a nurse, I assume could work at a hospital. So how would someone like us get work in the UK in regard to a visa? Second, we have an 8 year old and I've read that getting him into public school can be a problem at first but I didn't see many details as to why. Also, if anyone can recommend nice areas and site to find housing. We don't know if this move would be possible but  I thought I'd try to find out in my free time. Any information would be great! Thanks, Brian

Hi Brian,

Welcome to UKY!

In order to move to the UK, you need a visa. There's no such thing as just upping and moving. I'm assuming from your post that both you and your wife are US citizens?

There is the option of a work visa, but there's a shortage list (not sure where it's listed). I believe in order to receive a work visa, your chosen career has to be on the shortage list.

There's the option of a student visa - if you or your wife wanted to study - but these can be costly.

I'm only really up and up on the spousal visa, so sorry I couldn't be more help. I'm sure someone else will come along and give you more information.

Welcome again!

There is the option of a work visa, but there's a shortage list (not sure where it's listed). I believe in order to receive a work visa, your chosen career has to be on the shortage list.

To get a work visa you need to be sponsored by a company and to fulfill a points requirement (made up of points for sponsorship, salary, maintenance funds etc.). See here for information about working in the UK: http://www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/visas-immigration/working/

If the job is listed on the skills shortage list (http://www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/sitecontent/documents/workingintheuk/shortageoccupationlist.pdf), then you will automatically get the points for sponsorship, but if it's not, then the company has to complete a resident labour market test... whereby they prove that they have advertised the job across the UK and the other 26 EU countries (500 million people) for a certain period of time and could not find any UK or EU citizen suitable for the job, before they can hire you.

In general, unless you work in a very specialised field, where there are only a small number of qualified people capable of doing the job (such as company directors/managers, doctors, scientists, academic researchers etc.), or in a job where there is a shortage of workers in the UK, it is likely to be extremely difficult to secure a work visa... especially as unemployment is still very high in the UK and there are maybe dozens of UK citizens applying for every job right now (so with so many people applying, it will be difficult for a UK company to show there are no suitable job candidates in the UK or the EU).

It didn't used to be this restrictive, but they've been tightening it up for years now.

Do either of you have Irish grandparents, by any chance?