London Living: How to Live in the UK (5 Visa Tips!)
- thereseholland
- Apr 18, 2015
- 4 min read
Since moving to the UK last summer, lots of people have asked me how they can do the same. It’s a dream of many around the world to live in London, so I am happy to help your dream come true!
Visa applications are an inevitable aspect of living abroad, so I am here to share the knowledge I've learned through sweat and tears in order to make someone's life easier.
Despite the fact that this list is relatively short, first and foremost you must know that any of these options will be hard work. If you’re up for the challenge, though, it's totally worth it!
Disclaimer: these tips are primarily for Americans, as I can speak only from my own experience. However, I feel confident enough about my tips to claim that these tips will help people from most countries, though there may be additional challenges not covered here that you may encounter depending which country you are from.
Related: How to Live Abroad Anywhere
So let's get started.
1. Be a student. This is one of the easiest ways to get a visa to live in any country. With that ease comes a price, though, as tuition is costly. If higher education is on your to-do list, a student visa is a great way to easily live abroad. Unversities in the UK have a fabulous reputation worldwide, so this option is certainly a great one if it's something you can afford or aspire to achieve.
2. Get a job. I'm starting off with some obvious ones here, but before you say "yeah I know, NEXT!" I have a lot to say that you might not know about getting a job in the UK.
First off, to get a work visa, you need to be offered a job first. It's come to my attention that a lot of my American friends think it works the other way around: that you get a visa to come to the UK and look for a job. This is simply not the case, unless you are on a student visa looking for work after graduation.
Secondly, the UK requires that the company offers you a skilled job to get a visa. Unfortunately, the UK does not offer working holiday visas the way Australia does, that allow you to work as a waitress or bartender for an extended length of time. If you want a working visa, you'll need to have a skilled job for a company*.
Next, you can't work for just any company. Not every company has the legal ability to offer visas to foreign nationals. Typically, the ones that do are big companies.
PROTIP! You can find a list of all of the companies that offer visas for the UK here.
3. Get an internship. I offer more info on this here, as this tip is not UK-specific.
4. Be Irish. Okay, this tip isn't an option for most of you reading. But there are a handful of you lucky enough to have the ancestry that will get you a visa.
Let me explain. If you are Irish, like super Irish, you can get a European passport as an Irish citizen. What?! Yeah! It's really awesome actually. The Irish government wants its diasporic community to embrace their roots and become Irish citizens if they want. This option will not just grant you easy entry to the UK, but will allow you to live in any part of Europe like any other European does! We're not just talking UK here, but Spain, Greece, France, wherever in the EU your heart desires to live!
What's the catch? Well, it's the super Irish part—you have to be considered "Irish enough"—which most of us aren't. To qualify for Irish citizenship, you need to be one of the following:
Born in Ireland or married to an Irish person (I know... NEXT!)
A child of someone born in Ireland (i.e. have Irish parents with Irish citizenship)
Be a grandchild of someone born in Ireland
Protip: Be the great-grandchild of an Irish citizen (if your parent was registered in the "Foreign births register" before you were born.)
If you think any of these are you (lucky b@stard!) get more info on the Irish government page about Irish citizenship through descent.
5. Just visit. Damn, so you tried all these and none of them worked? Well, the UK allows visitors from some countries to visit for extended periods without a visa. If you really feel London calling, you can visit the UK for up to 6 months in a year if you are American. Similar freedoms are offered to other countries, too. Check if you need a visa here.
If you choose to live in the UK without a visa under this exception, remember that you are not legally allowed to work or study. You need a visa to work or study, as I mentioned. But if you feel so inclined, and you have (a lot) of money saved up, come on over and just chill out for up to six months!
Cheers, mate! See ya here soon!
Let me know what you think of my tips the the comments below!
Footnotes
*This refers to the most common Tier 2 working visa. There are additional working types of visas for entrepreneurs or sportspeople, to name a few, but I am not an expert on these visa types. For more info on Tier 2 working visas, visit the UK government website about them here.
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