English Citizen returning to England with spouse

[bluedude588]

Hello, so my girlfriend is english and we plan on moving back there as soon as we are married. (We are in America) She is a software engineer. Ive read that one of the requirements of getting a marriage visa is that she has a job offer starting within three months of getting there. How hard will it be for her to get a job offer in England while still in America? She has a BA in software engineering.

[Wanderer]

She has to have had a job in UK for six months earning £18,600 pa or more.

In your circumstances the only realistic way is for her to return to UK, find a job as above, keep it for six months, apply for Spouse visa.

[ruirui]

Hi bluedude.

I believe that there are two ways of doing this if you are already married in the US.

1. She returns to the UK, finds a job, works for six months earning over 18,600 pounds per year and then you can apply to join her.
2. She has earned 18,600 pounds equivalent over the last 12 months or has had the same job for more than six months and is on track to earn 18,600 pounds equivalent in the US. She finds a job in the UK offering her 18,600 or more a year and has a signed job offer. You then apply to move there with her.

As you are not yet married, may be worth seeing if the fiance route would enable you to move straight to the UK without meeting the financial requirement.

[bluedude588]

Yes I know about the money requirement, Im just wondering how hard it would be for her to find a job over there while we are still living here. I really would not like having to be away from her for months. And thanks for that tip on using a fiance visa, I look it up.

[MPH80]

As with so many things - it depends.

It depends what programming languages she uses
It depends where in the country you plan to live (will you be near a tech centre?)
It depends how much experience she has
It depends on how desperate the companies are (and when I was last interviewing for software devs in London - I saw 10 pre-filtered CVs for every hire - so I wasn't short of experienced people).
It depends how willing the company is to wait for someone to then a) get a visa for their spouse and b) move.

[bluedude588]

Ok well thanks, we both really would love to move there and we still have a few years left in college, and then a few more years becoming financially stable before we would want to move. Hopefully the immigration laws will be loosened a bit by then.

[Wanderer]

Ok well thanks, we both really would love to move there and we still have a few years left in college, and then a few more years becoming financially stable before we would want to move. Hopefully the immigration laws will be loosened a bit by then.

They will be considerably tightened up by then.....

[Casa]

It would have been helpful if you'd continued in your original thread and would have saved a repeat of the financial requirements. As you're a few years off applying, all advice given now can only be hypothetical.
http://www.immigrationboards.com/member ... 588/posts/

[bluedude588]

Why would it have been tightened by then? Oh sorry about the multiple threads.

[Wanderer]

Why would it have been tightened by then? Oh sorry about the multiple threads.

Look at the UK, it's full, 70 million people on a tiny island, plus there is a strong feeling of 'it's gone too far' so politically it's a vote grabber.

In the last few years visa fees have risen (it was all free not so long ago) we have an immigration Police force, and the tightening up has begun, stringent financial tests, brutal removals, etc..

The UK for all it's faults is are target for refugees, genuine and not-so genuine, students attending course after course to attain residency based on ten years, and ill prepared attempts at Entrepreneur visas - just look at the practically illiterate posting in the student forum, the terminally clueless posting the the T1 Ent. forum.

The last two years have seen a considerable tightening, to not much effect except huge visa cost increases to fund the next attempt at closing the doors.

I would say marriage based visas won't be affected as much, but the financial tests will probably get tougher and many more hoops to jump through will be introduced...

I could be wrong tho!