Hi.

My name is Porsha, I am a UK citizen my husband I have been together for 5 years and we got married last Nov.

He moved to the UK soon after the wedding, but has been struggling to find work here in London. So, we have set ourselves a time limit of Dec till we move back to the USA.

Just wanted to know whether you would recommend applying for the spousal visa in the summer or Dec? Do they take a long time to get processed? Also whether he should go back to the US get a job (he was working in the department of corrections and has been told that there is still a job avaliable for him) and then apply for the spousal visa? or should it be done while we are both still here in the UK?

I am going to post this in the spousal visa forum, but I just wanted to know if finding work in the US would be hard for a UK citizen (as we didn't think that it would have been this hard for him to find work in the UK)???
I am a qualified secondary school teacher, but have a business degree so I could technically work for any company.

Any advice or opinions are appreciated.

If you have a degree and work experience and English is your first language I shouldn't think you'd have any more trouble than anyone else. From what I gather the people who seem to struggle most finding work are people who don't speak English well, people who didn't go to uni, or people without much work experience. If you're a teacher you shouldn't really struggle; many school districts are so desperate for teachers that they will take you on while you train for your teaching certification. My cousin was hired as a teacher while she was visibly pregnant and without any certification; she is currently taking the necessary courses to get a teaching certificate in Texas. I think they give uncertified teachers 5 years in TX to get certified or they fire them.

As for the visa to the US, I suggest looking at some of the timelines for members in the UK. Don't take my own timeline as an accurate indicator of how long the process takes; we moved at a very leisurely pace. If you have all your ducks in a row and you get lucky, you could get it done in as little as 3-4 months...I have met people who got theirs that fast. Realistically speaking however, you're probably looking at more like 6-9 months.

Your husband won't be able to apply directly to the London USCIS office since he hasn't been in the UK for long enough. Filing directly is the only possible way it could take as little as four to six months. The official line is that he should have Indefinite Leave to Remain, but most people have their petitions accepted if they've been in the UK on a non-tourist visa for more than 11 months. Applying directly with London USCIS, takes six to nine months in most cases.

At this point, your husband would have to petition the US service center of his last residence in the states. Or if he no longer has an address in the states, use the address of one his close family members or friends who can be trusted to send him things in the mail. That process, if you follow the I-130 all the way to the CR1 visa, would take over a year. Your other option is to file for a K3 non-immigrant visa. You would probably get that sooner, probably by December, but you would not be able to work in the US until you have the authorization to work document, which will take about three months after applying. And you can't apply until after you've entered on the K3 for the first time. Then you would have to file an Adjustment of Status, which will likely be extremely expensive by then if the fees are raised as per the current proposal.

In my opinion, I think you should forget about your time limit of December. The easiest and least expensive route that allows for the least time apart would be to wait until November of this year and file directly with the London USCIS office. On that route, you would have the CR1 visa, probably by April of 08, which results in a two year green card at your first point of entry in the states. So no adjustment of status or extra fees until it comes time to remove conditions, which you would have to do on the K3 route as well since adjusting status would result in a two-year green card for you.

The process of immigrating from the UK to the US is so wildly different and so much harder than immigrating from the US to the UK that it is hardly to be believed.

Thank you both so much for your reply.

I think what you have said makes so much sense. After reading all of this information, I think that the time limit should be dropped too...

Direct Consular Filing seems the least stressful option, but I realise from what has been said that we should ideally wait for him to recieve his ILR.

I guess I will be back on here in a year or so.

Thanks again.

Mrs.Me, I cannot find any evidence on the embassy's website that there are any minimum time requirements for a USC to have been in the UK in order to take advantage of DCF. There USED to be information on the website about that, but there is no longer. I am not convinced that there is a hard and fast time limit anymore, or that an ILR visa for the USC is required. When I first filed for my husband in summer 2005 there was a residency requirement that was spelled out very clearly, but like I said I can't find any information about that anymore on their website. The embassy in London is usually pretty clear about their rules:

http://london.usembassy.gov/dhs/uscis/i130filing.html

http://london.usembassy.gov/dhs/forms/i130..._for_spouse.pdf

I STRONGLY recommend that you speak to the visa unit at the US Embassy in London about opportunities for DCF before making ANY decisions or before filling out a single form. You might...MIGHT...be able to do it. Let us know what they say.

There's definitely no reason to wait for him to have ILR, especially since ILR is really expensive now. If you file at the end of this year, I would be really surprised if they didn't take it in the London USCIS office. I was on a student visa and then on a Limited Leave to Remain visa (19 months in total), and way over a year from being eligible for ILR, and the London office is currently processing my petition. It definitely doesn't hurt to try. I included a letter asking them to return it to me if they couldn't process it at that time.

Oh wow. I didn't think to recheck those pages. I think you're right. And they can always include a letter asking the London USCIS office to return it to them instead of forwarding to the US service center. They won't take payment if they can't process the petition.

Mrs Me - I looked on my other frequently visited immigration forum, and found this -

http://forum.diveintoamerica.com/showthread.php?t=3706

So! That's good news for you guys! It means your husband's 1-130 could be filed in London as soon as next month, once he's been here in the UK on his LLR visa for six months.