My daughter has a friend living in England. Can anyone here give me some info on how difficult it would be for her live in England for 3 months to a year?
Ideally she’d get a job there for 6 months or so then come home. It’s my understanding that she could just live there for 3 months on her passport as a tourist. Can you guys suggest the options?
What is your daughter willing to do for work? There are a number of companies that place foreigners in short-term service-industry jobs (hotels, restaurants, and the like). I don’t have direct experience with them, so I imagine she’d want to do her research, but anecdotal experience suggests this is a good way to live abroad for the short term, especially if she can live with the friend. If there’s a local college with a travel agency on site, they would be a good place to start. (If your daughter is 50 with an MBA, or seven, please disregard.)
AFAIK she can live in the UK no problem on her tourist visa, but she couldn’t work here on it.
She needs to go on the UK Border Agency website and see what kind of Visa she needs. It largely depends on the kind of work she plans on doing.
http://www.ukvisas.gov.uk/
She is 20 years old. It would likely be service industry work. I.e waitress
What citizenship does she hold? The UK used to have a working holiday visa for certain nationals which allow them to stay in the UK for up to two years and work for up to one of those years; I understand that this scheme has since been revamped, but it’s worth looking into. And of course, if she has or can obtain the citizenship of any EU country, then she will be allowed to live and work in the UK indefinitely without a visa. If any of her parents or grandparents are citizens of an EU country, then there is a chance she already holds citizenship; all she has to do is apply for a passport.
A good resource for US->UK migration related stuff is the UK-Yankee website. The forums are here. They’re a helpful bunch, good for prepping visitors on what to bring etc.
She’s a US citizen. I don’t know how easy it would be to prove that any of her ancestors were from the EU. While I know my grandfather was was from Ireland or Scotland, I’m not sure I’d be able to prove it. I’m just looking at a way for her to experience life a little bit. Since she’s good friends with a family that currently live there; I thought that’d be one possible way.
It’s my understanding she can go over for 3 months as a visitor… but I like the idea of her working to pay her own way while over there.
As an American citizen, your daughter’s probably not going to be eligible for a working holiday visa (the US Government doesn’t offer them, so most other countries in turn don’t offer theirs to us), and she’s doesn’t have the sort of skills that other working visas demand (or an employer willing to sponsor her). But she’d be able to enter the UK under visa waver and stay for up to 90 days (as I recall); she’d just not be legally able to work there during her stay.
Maybe your daughter could look into study abroad programs? She might be able to stay longer if she was eligible for a student visa.
In 2008 I entered the UK and the stamp says I could have stayed 6 months. Maybe it is only 3 months now… ??
And on a student visa, she’s definitely not able to work. (At least I wasn’t when I studied abroad in Australia as an American undergrad, lo these 11 years ago now.)
That doesn’t mean that she can’t - one of my friends did end up working as a waitress/server, but she was paid in cash by the restaurant, purely to get around the rules. Not sure if some cafe in the UK would want to do the same or not. (You know those Aussies, criminals the lot of them. 
)
Actually, on a student visa, you can work up to 20 hours a week during term time, and full-time during the holidays
http://www.ukvisas.gov.uk/en/aboutus/features/studyingintheuk - if you download the guide to the student visa, it includes the following paragraph:
However, I do believe that the course you are attending has to be longer than 6 months for this to apply, but of course IANAIL, etc.
No, you’re allowed to work on a UK student visa. Mind, you can’t if you come in as a student visitor and get stamped in for 6 months, but if you’ve got a student visa that you’ve applied for in advance, you’re allowed to work up to 20 hours a week during term time and fulltime during vacation periods. I’m in the UK on a student visa right now myself and I know one or two of my fellow American students have part-time jobs going. But you have to be able to support yourself without recourse to employment and, frankly, depending on where you’re at, you might not be able to count on jobs anyway. I live in Belfast at the moment and for all that I know American students with jobs, I know many more who can’t find anything. Easier to hire locals than worry about immigration stuff.
Enright3 - if your daughter isn’t interested in studying, she might be able to get an internship in the UK for 6 months instead. I gather it’s difficult to do, but it is an option.
Ah. I was there for only a semester, so I fell in the “less than 6 months” camp. It’s also possible (maybe even likely) that Australian rules differed, at least back in '99.