I haven’t seen visa waiting times mentioned yet in the thread - make sure that you are prepared for these. You’d think that meeting Tier 2 and having a certificate of sponsorship would make things quick, right? Wrong! Look on immigration forums and so forth to get some idea, don’t go by any of the official published timescales.
A typical example of the type of problem - fast-track processing by showing up in person to the office. Seems worth the extra couple of hundred pounds/dollars, until you realise that there are zero appointments available in the next three months, and they don’t accept bookings more than three months in advance.
Once you are ready to submit a visa application, be prepared to be waiting without your passport and other identity documents for many months, with no certainty.
First of all, Mrs. Cad is a world-traveler and where better to do that than Europe? I started my doctorate in math ed at Exeter and transfered to Warwick (long story). Traveling to London to catch the coach (am I getting the Brit-speak down?) to Coventry I fell in love with the country. London is more cosmopolitan than LA and New York is. The pub culture. How nice the people are. Berlin is a 35 GBP flight away or Eurorail to Paris, Rome, Madrid. What a great opportunity not only for us but Cad Jr. who is only 13 to travel. It’s not that we don’t like living in the US or are bored here but when Gove changed the policy that allowed US-trained teachers to get QTS (and yes I already have QTS) we looked at each other and said how can we pass up this opportunity.
Waived since I did my induction well over a decade ago. I’m not sure what the UK’s opinion of Gove and the whole shake up with the educational bureaucracy but as a US (and Austrailia gets thrown in the mix) with full credentials and an NBCT, I felt slighted that because I wasn’t EU trained that I had to start at the near bottom. I for one welcome our new Educational Ministry overlords.
So Szlater, next time in London can I buy you a beer and we can compare English school administrators with American school administrators?
IANAIL… I am, however, an immigration sufferer, so might be able to offer some advice on this one. My understanding is that each dependant needs to fill out a separate application form, and you list all dependants on your application form, and then submit the whole wad of paperwork together. The rules around how much money you need to hold and for how long tend to change, so make sure you follow the latest guidance.
Submitting dependant applications at the same time as yours is a lot cheaper than doing them later. Just in case you were thinking of splitting the applications up.
Yes, yes, a thousand times yes. I’m currently in a very awkward limbo where I have no passport (work permit is being renewed), and no way of finding out what stage my application is at, or when it’s likely to be sent back, or even if it will be actually be approved. I also have a flight home to India on Wednesday. So… yeah. :dubious:
Be very prepared to lose your passport for up to some months (the guidance, astonishingly, is that you can’t ask for an update on your application until it’s been outstanding for 6 months).
I also tried applying for a fast-track application, and encountered exactly the situation described above. No appointments anywhere in the UK - I tried London, Cardiff, Manchester, Edinburgh and even Belfast. Nada. Zip. Zilch - though I did discover the other day that there’s a “super-premium” service where they bring the biometric equipment to your house and generally treat you very well, with a 1-day turnaround, if you only pay them the trifling sum of £6,000. On top of the premium fee of £1,800, though.
So yes, be prepared for this!
On the plus side, you have one more person in London who can buy you a beer, so get cracking!
According to the official website FWIW time in the US is 10 days for 90%+ of visa applications. Part of that makes sense because you don’t need a visa to travel to the UK for less than 6 months but then again with all of the people in the US, is it possible that 90% of visa apps are for travel and the 10% that take forever are the visas to live there?
