No job, no visa..no visa, no job...help?

In My Humble Opinion
1

So, I want to move to the UK. Ok, I’m in the Uk. I want to stay here. I’m in love.

I’m here with HIM (:slight_smile: ) on one of those six month visa waivers. So I’ll be goiung back in…well, right now, about 2.5 months. I want to get a job so I can stay here. Can I say, I’m very bad at getting jobs under the best of cirumstances. And now I’ve got this additionally handicap of having to explain I can’t really work for you till you make me the offer and I go home and get permission and then I can work for you…

That and, my other concern is I’ve been told to guaruntee a visa, I need to prove I’m doing a job that some other Brit couldn’t just as easily do. Well, I’m not without my own talent…and I’d love to get work as a photographer which is what makes me…special :stuck_out_tongue: …but I don’t know if I can come up with something visa worthy in two months.

So I’m pleading for any advice, experience, information, thoughts…on getting work without (for) a visa. Can I get a visa with, say, a job in a bookstore, or will they want me to be…special?

Please, any advice.

thanks

2

Well…and keep in mind that I am not an immigration lawyer…this is probably not the news you’re looking for, but–in December 2000, I was working full-time, going to college full-time, and married to a UK citizen, and I was still rebuffed on my visa application, because my (now ex-)wife and I were separated and no longer living at the same address. I had a letter from my boss–the principal of an Oxford college–explaining that I needed to stay, but that was ignored. The fact that I had been living in the UK for over five years and had for all intents and purposes made it my home meant absolutely nothing.

This is completely my opinion, mind, but the immigration services in England SUCK. I played by their rules, turned everything in properly, became a productive citizen of their country, and their response was to turn me out of the country. :mad:

Good luck. Seriously.

3

Arrgh…in releasing my surpressed anger over this, I forgot to mention this–a job at a bookstore will definitely not allow you to stay. That is, if you can get one…most American students I knew who were working sans visa were doing things like working at bars where they were being paid under the table. Needless to say, work experience like that is not going to sway the authorities.

4

Unfortunately, your legal options are probably limited to:

  1. Get married
  2. Get accepted to a university

Sorry, I know how it feels.

5

In reality, that means “Pay £9000 a year into our education system, and we’ll let you stay”.

6

And, in my case, I did both of those, and could still not stay in the country.

I think now you may be getting some idea of how difficult it’s going to be…

7

I have one friend who came here from Japan when she was twelve. And she had no choice but stay in five years of university education, at full overseas fees, before she was regarded as having been here long enough to naturalise.

The immigration system is fucked from top to bottom - secretly they’d love to let in lots of smart hard-working foreigners, but there’s a solid core of public opinion that doesn’t want anyone ‘different’. No, no, they’re not racist, they just, y’know, worry about how it’ll affect thigns, and stuff, and blah blah…

8

Surely you cannot be claiming that the UK’s immigration policy is racist. This site reports that there are more nonwhites than Welsh or Irish in the UK, as well as a million Muslims.

9

Actually, it doesn’t say that there are more nonwhites than Welsh or Irish. Look at the numbers:

81.5 English
09.6 Scottish
02.4 Irish
01.9 Welsh
01.8 “Ulster”
02.8 other
100 %

Now, there are two points here:

  1. Roughly half of “Ulster” people are in fact of Irish ethnicity, so that would push the Irish figure up above the “other” figure

  2. The “other” must numerically include all manner of ethnicities besides those already listed - including many white ethnicities such as Scandinavian, French, etc. It’s not clear at all why the author of that site would list the percentage categories in the way that he did, except possibly that, looking at the rest of the site, the author appears to be a bit of a nutjob.

Now, may I ask, what is your agenda Hyperelastic?

10

Ruadh - many of those identifying themselves as English could indeed be non-white.

Hyperelastic - Yes, Britain’s immigration policy is screamingly racist. The presence of non-whites in the country isn’t evidence to the contrary.

11

A valid point, and yet another reason to dismiss that page as contributing nothing to the discussion whatsoever.

12

My own experience with UK immigration has been nothing but good. I was working for a software company in the US and got transfered to the UK. The company took care of all the work permit hoop-jumping for me, including posting ads for my job and proving I was the best one for it. After 4 years on the work permit I applied for a permanent resident visa which was approved in about a month. After a year on that I applied for citizenship, and that also came thru in about a month. After that, the passport application took about 2 weeks.

13

OK, here’s another source. If I add up “Indian, Pakistani, Mixed, Black Caribbean, Black African, Chinese and Black Other”, I get 7.5%. That outnumbers the Irish, Welsh and “Ulster” put together.

A counterargument might be that there are a lot more nonwhites than whites trying to immigrate to the UK, and thus the acceptance rate for nonwhites is disproportionately low. I wouldn’t offer up the possibility if I had a sinister “agenda”. Just try to avoid the nutjob sites when you check whether it’s true.

14

But the second cite you’ve linked to is for England only, not the UK as a whole.

15

Going back to the origional question …

My wife is an American and when we where starting our relationship we did just what you did. She came over on a six month tourist visa.

After that she went back to the USA and applied for and got a six month “Fiancé” visa. After that we got married :slight_smile: and have been happy ever since :wink:

16

For what it’s worth racism is the one thing I don’t have to worry about. My famliy *came * from England and Ireland to begin with. Anti-Americanism may prove to be a problem though :(. I hear America is putting more restictions on UK residents coming in to the UK (due to the whole biometric ID thing) could turn around and bite me.

Nice to hear a happy ending :slight_smile: especially as that looks like it’s going to be my situation.

Thanks for all the disheartening news everyone :smiley: .