DannybearsGirl

We have spent most of the day researching visa requirements, talking about what we're willing to do, and making plans. In a nutshell:

He'll finish his training and get a job. I'll continue working and we'll save up for the UK fiance visa and prepare for a basic wedding ceremony. I at least want a dress and a family gathering of some kind, and we both want rings. Once we've saved for that and the obvious extras of my living there and later visa fees and such, I'll fly over there on the fiance visa (we're aware of the income requirements and have worked this out) and we'll marry. I can then apply for a family of a settle person visa which would allow me to stay in the UK with him for 2 and a half years and repeat until I can settle there and apply for citizenship myself. With this we won't have to spend the extra money to have him come see me until we want to, not because we're forced to for visa requirements. My family is spread out all across the country (grandparents/friends in Oregon, mother in Colorado, friend in Virginia, uncle in Maryland) so I'd rather be able to have him stay here with me when we can spend that kind of money and have family all come to one place to meet him.

Neither of us have any intention of ever living in the US, it's not a matter of compromise, it's what we've both wanted as children. I dreamed of living in England before I even met him (yes I was 10 years old, so what?) and it just so happened I fell for a Brit and made my life a living hell.

Thank you all for your advice and sharing your personal experiences, I'm sorry if I came across harsh, we've been extremely frustrated at the unfairness of this system and on top of that my family still isn't respectful of my decision. We haven't even told them we're getting married yet. If anyone wants to offer advice on THAT landmine, feel free.

Otherwise, it seems we now have a much better understanding of how these things work in the US and the UK, so I feel much better prepared to deal with this in the future. Thanks again!

We don't intend to have in come here and become a resident. He has actually been taking a job training course under a college designed to help him get work (he has experience, work is just tough to find over there right now,) and he is almost finished with that. Taking a lot of your financial advice into consideration we decided this might be the best course of action.

He doesn't want to come here and waste time not getting a job just to get married and go home, so I looked into the UK fiance visa. On the government website it seems they've done away with that and now have this https://www.gov.uk/join-family-in-uk/overview Which would allow me to go there as a fiance, marry him, and apply to stay for another 6 months. Once married I could apply again to stay longer than that.

He said rather than coming here he's going to get a job as soon as his training ends and I'll continue saving with my crappy call centre job. Once we have saved up enough money for the visa rather than attempting to get into his country so soon after just coming back from there I'll just apply for the visa and hopefully we can get married in England after that, then I'd be allowed to work there too. If he has a job the income requirement would be satisfied for the visa.

Anyone see flaws in our plan or any legal issues we might run into?

I saved my 6 months plane ticket receipt, his family and several people can verify how serious we are about each other, we have pictures of us together and years worth of emails and skype messages to prove our history. We also may still have paypal history from the money we've sent each other over the years. Would this be enough to prove our relationship is substantial?

Thanks everyone, finally some innovative ideas! I really appreciate this! We've talked over everything you mentioned and have a basic gameplan. A couple questions.

For the spouse visa sponsor income requirements, can my personal savings count towards that? How about the members of his family he lives with?

We're considering having him come to the US for a month to marry with the ESTA thing (the fiance visa sounds stressful costly and a giant waste of time) and have a simple courthouse wedding, saving the "real" one for later with family and such. Can I do this legally?

Finally, if he can prove he'll be returning and has heavy ties to his own country, will he be likely to have an issue getting into the border here in the US because he has a love interest here? Should he mention that we're serious or try to downplay it? (how much info should he reveal)

Thank you!

You're going in circles, and you've been given a lot of good advice here. First and foremost, there is NO living together for two years requirement. Not here, not in the UK. You appear to be hung up on the cohabiting partners issue, which is not and likely never will be your case. Nick & Diane gave you a good game plan, but bear in mind you or your boyfriend can always be turned away at the border. If you're young, living at home or at school, not making a lot of money, and have few ties to your own country (read: can you or he prove you will go home?) you risk being turned away. It happens. It says nothing about your relationship, but both countries have to deal with visa overstays regularly.

You're young. You know you're young. Heck, when I was barely (and I mean barely) older than you I fell in love with a guy from London while I was on a working holidaymaker visa there, and I was convinced we couldn't live without each other. We had the benefit of a much easier UK spousal visa protocol back then, but I thought I would literally pass away if we couldn't be together. If we hadn't been able to get married for whatever reason, we would have just had to suck it up and deal -- and this was in the early days of the internets. No Skype, no cheap calls. But I like to think we would have made it anyway.

I ended up living in the UK for a dozen years. No lie -- it was tough in the beginning. I had been on holiday there several times, had worked there for six months, and studied for four, but nothing prepared me for the long haul, everyday, this isn't holiday, this is my life-ness of it. But I slogged on, and often it was fantastic! But it was an uphill battle for years.

Time for big girl panties. You and your boyfriend are going to have to figure this out. Your best bet, since you both have limited incomes, is for him to come to the US and for the two of you to marry, after spending more time to get to know each other on VWP trips. (The more, the better, if only for the sake of figuring out how you feel about each other.) He then returns to the UK while his spousal visa is processed. You both take that time to solidify your marriage and your finances. He can visit you, you can visit him. Get a joint sponsor for the financial aspect. He comes over, you live in wedded bliss and then figure out if you want to move back to the UK at some point.

Or he can get a job paying at least £18k and do it on his side. There's no way of getting around these things, and trust me, you will not die being apart for a few months at a time. A good friend of mine has been apart for over six months from her husband of many years while he's setting things up for them abroad. She doesn't enjoy it, but it's something to be endured.

You'll find quickly there's little to no sentimentality in marriage-based immigration, and no amount of railing at the unfairness of it all (and it can seem very unfair, especially on the UK side) is going to change that. You'll be fine. Everyone else on here has done it, is doing it or is about to do it, so why not you?

We already know what we want we don't need to waste more time ducking around and wasting money on 3 month visits. I finally got the info I needed. Sorry you had to wait so long but neither I nor my fiance want to spend 12 years of our youth living in anguish. That's time spent we could be having all kinds of adventures together. Yes, it would be worth it, but if at all possible we don't want to do it. i have no fear of spending an extended amount of time in England, I have little friends and family here I care about and he is honestly the only true family I have anyway. Our relationship isn't in question and we don't need to waste anymore time "getting to know each other" we've had 8 years of that. Time to get on with our lives.

Thanks everyone, I'm off, I appreciate all the advice!

Ha ha ... Got it

To get a visa waiver your fiancé has to apply for ESTA (online, very straight forward) more than 72 hours before he travels. He must also have a passport which is valid for a further 6 months after his intended return date.

Once he has successfully submitted the ESTA his visa waiver is valid for two years. It means he can enter the US at any time for a visit of up to 90 days. However he has waived all rights to appeal and he can get turned away at the border ... It is down to the discretion of the border officer.

To minimise the risk of being denied entrance to the US you he could consider shorter visits and he should travel with documents showing ties to the UK such as property rental agreement, employment, bank account, car ownership, etc. basically the border officer wants to be satisfied that your fiancé is not likely to overstay.

Whatever you do, do not overstay any visas ... Your case can get complicated very quickly if you do.

Thanks, that's all I needed to know. Nobody was giving me details just vague information or things I already knew. Now I have somewhat of a plan figured out.

Oh, right. Sorry.

Okay. So that would suck but it's doable. Something nobody has answered, for the US waiver visa, after he successfully gets it does the 3 months time start counting down instantly? If so, we wouldn't be able to buy our plane ticket in advance and it would cut into the actual time we have together.

Also, do you know if people often get rejected for the spouse visa, or should we be okay as long as we've met the requirements? I'd love to be able to spend 2 years at a time with him, I'm just nervous about spending $1400 on something that might just get rejected.

Spending time together on visitor visas is a good way to try out you relationship before you jump in and do all the really difficult, stressful things ... Marrying, immigrating/emigrating, leaving family and friends, getting careers sorted, etc. Sounds like you can do this:

6 month visitor visa in the UK

1.5 months apart

3 months visa waiver in the US

1.5 months apart

Rinse and repeat.

Time apart is hard but you'll find that every couple on this website has survived considerable amounts of time spent apart. It is a proving ground for a relationship before you make it legal and permanent.

Can I go back to the UK for another 6 months after such a short amount of time? If I could do that I wouldn't be so stressed out about this. I'd read on the UK gov website you couldn't spend more than 6 months per YEAR there with visitor visas.

Ultimately we want to live in the UK together. I suppose it's possible we could marry in the US and he could apply for citizenship here. I don't know how difficult that would be though since the US seems even less happy to let foreigners come here than the UK. His grandmother is also very old and he doesn't want to be away from her when she passes, so living in the US isn't ideal.

If the only way for us to spend the most time together and for me to go live in the UK with him, is for us to marry ASAP, we'll do it. I just want to know how to go about it. Can he come here on a visitor visa to do that? I read somewhere we can still marry if he is on a tourist visa.

I am willing to do what I need to do to immigrate to the UK. It just seems to me like it's not possible because it's not just money requirements they want, it's time spent in certain places adding up to several years requirements they want, which makes this impossible.

I already know how he can apply for a tourist visa which would allow him to stay here for maybe 2 months and then we'd have to wait another x amount of months until I could go there and we can just repeat this loop of misery forever.

I'm asking is there any way around this? If he manages to get a job and satisfy the income requirement, all we have to do is get married and I can apply for the visa right? Is that it or is there some other catch?

We are both so tired of this and just want it to be over. I still haven't gotten any solid advice. The system is completely against us. What are we supposed to do? I'm fully aware of how frustrating this is and it's killing both of us. So what is the solution here?

Right I get that, he's poor. Is that seriously our only option? We have to spend 6 months at a time away from each other while he works to satisfy this requirement, because there's no other way?

Okay, I don't really care how we do it. I just want to know how to do it. We planned to have him come here because I'm not allowed to go there for another six months since I just got back. It's horrible being separated from each other and that stupid 2 year requirement of living together seems to pop up everywhere, which is hard with all these other requirements put in place. If there is anyway for me to just go there and stay with him, let me know. That's what I want to do. The issue is this amount of time they want us to live together first, and it costs a lot of money to keep going back and forth. We have known each other for 8 years and we know what we want so this is ridiculous. Please tell me where we can go from here.

I have looked into immigrating there and all these requirements keep coming up that require me to have lived in the UK for a certain amount of time (which they're making it incredibly difficult for me to do) or have lived with my fiance for a certain amount of time (and the only way I know to do that is with the UK visitor visa, which I can only do once every 6 months)

I'm seriously stuck here. Someone please enlighten me.

A common law marriage involves no ceremony and most states do not allow people to contract them . In some US jurisdictions, living together presenting yourself and your significant other in public as married, makes you actually, legally married (a common law marriage entered into in a jurisdiction that recognizes them is just as legally valid as one with a ceremony).

That having been said, in the UK "common law marriage" is frequently used as slang to refer to long-term cohabitating couples, and the UK does have a visa to accommodate people in that situation (the Unmarried Partner Visa) which requires that the applicant "must have been living with their partner in a relationship akin to a marriage or civil partnership for at least two years prior to the date of application."

We mean to get legally married, not just say we're married. I'm also aware of the 2 year requirement. I'm concerned about that income thing someone mentioned - if my fiance doesn't make a large amount of money, and that's grounds for not allowing me into the country (even though I can legally work there with the visa I'd get once we marry) then that's end game. There's no way for us to get around that.

I lived with him for 6 months and yes things were tight but that's fine. We love each other and that is our main concern. So basically if he's poor I'm not allowed to live with him?

I don't feel like I've gotten any really helpful information here. Again I'll ask: WHAT are our options.

Is common law different from a regular legal marriage? I thought if we both had goverment identification and we had a simple (but nice, obviously it should be a special day!) wedding in the US, it would still count as being married in the UK. Am I wrong on that?

I have no idea why you couldn't edit your post, I'm still figuring out this website myself.

I'm not sure about the youtube thing. I'm pretty sure it is on his taxes but he doesn't get paid much so it may not be counted. He gets some money from the government and has been struggling to find a job. There are several places I want to apply for work and I also have my own self managed jewelry making business which I intend to continue when I am allowed to work there. The income thing wouldn't be a problem if we didn't have to waste time going back and forth between each other's countries. Employers don't like that.

So again, what do you suggest we do? What are our options? It seems like there's millions of visa for both of our countries and it's one complicated mess. We just want to be together. What is the best way to go about that?

I just read about the visa that would allow me to stay in the UK for 2 years and work if we married. Here is the link: https://www.gov.uk/join-family-in-uk/overview

It says somewhere we either need to be married, or have proof that we've lived together for 2 years (we have been thinking we had to do this, thus my confusion and stress). If we can get married on a shorter visit in the US, and I can apply for that visa to live in the UK it would be perfect.

Are there any issues with that plan I should be aware of? it seems too good to be true. I just really want some advice/suggestions on what to do here.

What do you guys suggest we do then? We just want to be allowed to spend time together (we need to do this before I can be allowed to move to England, else I would do it already and not bother with this complicated #######.)

If there were some way for us to get married here and apply for a UK marriage visa I would even do that, but I think that has the 2 year living together requirement as well.

If we got the 3 month visa, would he be able to stay in the US for longer than that with an immigration officer's approval? The major problem is, how the heck do we book a plane ticket round trip with all of this stuff that is uncertain? He gets a visa, we book the ticket for 3 months round trip, the officer says he can stay longer and we're screwed, either buy a new ticket or pay a fee to have it changed if we're lucky. Not to mention the way it sounds like the visa works, if it's only 3 months long that's including the time it takes to buy the ticket..and the cost goes up if we don't buy in advance.

Is there something I'm missing here or is the system totally screwed up?

We really don't want to have to spent 6 months apart each year for the next 3 years. ._.

There has to be something I just haven't read somewhere.

Sorry I didn't say anything, I was still reading. It definitely helped, I'm still wondering though - would it be difficult for him to get in? We don't want to pay that much money for a visa unless we're pretty damn sure it'll happen. Since you mentioned the fiance visa I also looked at that (I'm sure he'd have no objection to getting married early) however, and correct me if I'm wrong, that would only allow him to stay in the US with me for 3 months, and our long term goal isn't to have him move here, though we will get married in both of our countries for our family and friend's. It sounds to me like US border control is pretty picky about letting people in, and he could still get turned away at the border control even if he successfully got a passport? Does that happen often?

I couldn't find any info on how long it usually takes to get these visas.

3 months is a short amount of time and doesn't really suit our long term goal..we'd still have to spend several months apart. Since he has no intention of living here and I want to move to the UK would that make our case look any better for the 6 month visa? We want to spend as long as possible together, the less time we have to wait for our partner visa later the better.

Our Goal: To have him come stay with me in Maryland for six months. I will be renting a small room for us both from my uncle (who owns the house) and supporting both of us. He also gets a bit of money from his youtube work. Money isn't my question here as we have that figured out. I'm just wondering about the legal stuff.

Ultimately I want to move to the UK, but because I can only stay there for six months at a time once a year, we have to switch off (me going there him coming here) until we can apply for a partner or fiancé visa. First I'll list my questions, then I'll go over our history together in case that's needed (when I went to England, the immigration officer wanted proof of our relationship since that was my reason for going there.) Here goes.

1) How difficult is it to get a tourist visa for a UK citizen (England)? It was fairly easy for me to get one into the UK, I just got my passport stamped. for this I've read he'll need to pay a fee for the visa itself and have an interview - it sounds costly and time consuming. Are the chances high that he'll get turned down because visiting his girlfriend isn't a good enough reason to be here or something?

2) How much does it cost overall (including fees and stuff).

3) How long does it take to get the visa, and what ways can it be gotten.

4) How would he get the visa whilst being in England (if he has to have an interview where would he go to do that, a US embassy or something? He lives in Sheffield)

5) Would we be able to get a visa for 6 months or even longer (which would be AWESOME) or is that generally hard to do? If we applied for a visa that lasts 6 months and they don't want to give us that much time, does that mean we'd have to reapply and hope it goes through?

6) Are UK citizens coming into the states frowned upon by border control like some residents of other countries? I suppose this is similar to the first question, I'm wondering if there's any info he needs to provide to them (convince them he has no plans to work here, or should he even mention me at all?)

I'll admit I'm generally scared it'll fail for some reason and our time and money will be for naught. It's already tough being apart. Anyway here's our history and plans, if this helps.

We met on a lame RPG online when we were kids. I was 11 and he was 14. Somehow we quickly became the best of friends and each other's only confidants (we both had daddy issues, to put it lightly) and so latched onto each other quickly. This manifested into several immature on and off online dating relationships over the years to come until 2 years ago we decided to meet and really give it ago - this was love, not a kid thing any longer. 6 months and 2 weeks ago he picked me up at the Manchester airport and took me to his home in Sheffield England where I lived with him, his mom and sister, and now we have plans to be married in the next two years. I'm 19 and he's 22. I know we're young but that's how it is. I fell in love with England and want to live there with him, so our main goal is to get a partner of fiance visa that would allow me to live and work there for 2 years at a time (and reapply). But to do that he has to come here otherwise we have to be without each other for 6 months and wait for years to do that. Which is pretty much torture.

Any info/advice/ would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!