Immigration

[Under2000]

I'm looking for advice on living and working in the UK if you are from the US. Specifically, if an american woman marries a british man and they live in England, is she allowed to work. I've looked online but can't see anything that says she can. It seems to say that she needs to live in the UK for 3 years before she can work, is that right?

Forgot to say, I guess she is allowed to work if she can get a work visa but unlikely in her area of work (creative/art).

Yes you can work straight away on a spouse visa. But to qualify for the visa I think the British spouse needs to prove an existing income of £18,600 per year and you need to prove you've been in a relationship for over 2 years.

Oh I've just noticed that the financial side varies and they now take in to account loss of income due to covid.

@SantaSue thanks. Do you have a link to where you're getting this information and I could take a look. Being in a relationship for 2 years, does that mean living together?

I have no idea if things have changed, but I believe when I did it, I came on a fiance visa. You have 6 months from issue/entry (I forget which) to get married. After marriage, I had to apply for leave to remain (not indefinite leave to remain which is different), which is the equivalent in US terms to like temporary residency. You are a resident, but it's not permanent. I could work as soon as I had that, which was within about 6 months of my initial move. I fortunately still had a job back in the US that I could remotely, so my employment hadn't been interrupted during those 6 months. But I went self-employed in the UK that next year and then on mat leave (with UK paid leave), so definitely was working within a year of moving here.

I absolutely cannot imagine that you would now be barred from working for 3 years. Are you assuming that you cannot work until you have Indefinite Leave to Remain? I believe you now need to wait 3 years to apply for ILR as a spouse (it was longer when I did it), but you can absolutely work before that as ILR is usually quite far along in the process in terms of settlement.

This should be helpful: www.expatica.com/uk/moving/visas/spouse-family-visas-uk-108101/

It looks like the answer is yes, if you are on a family visa. If you are on a fiance visa (that's what I came on), you can only work once you have married and applied for the family visa as a partner (which has to happen within 6 months).

Ah thank you @mindutopia that's the sort of thing I'm trying to find out about. So she would not be able to work until she is married but could fairly soon after.