Moving to US - no links, no relatives, no jobs

[Rainingharder]

My dear friend is wanting to fulfil a lifelong dream to move the US. The have a visa appointment in London start of Feb. They have no links there - no relatives or a job. Her DH has had an informal offer of a job (retail) but nothing formal in writing as they have said it would be dependent on getting a visa. Friend would look for a job when there.

my friend seems to think that after the Feb meeting they will be awarded a visa within weeks and is planning her life accordingly (inc handing in her notice at work). Am I right to think she’s living in cloud cuckoo land?!

what is the likelihood of her getting approved?

Obviously it’s her decision to make! I’m just trying to persuade her to not hand in her notice until at least after the Feb meeting

Unless one of them is from the US there is zero chance of them getting a visa

You need to be sponsored by an employer to move to the US and even then it's not straight forward

Thank you, that’s what I thought. Kudos to her optimism but everything I’ve heard is that it’s very very difficult to move, even if you do have links

Would they not have been told that though before / whilst they made the appointment at the visa office?

yeah, thats not happening! Unless they have a LOT of money in the bank that you dont know about, without a very close relative or a job to go to they will not get a visa to live in the usa.

You book an appointment via an online system in my experience

Lol not happening. Unless one is a citizen or they’re trying to get an extended tourist visa and plan to work illegally??

When we did it on L visas DH was sponsored by his employer, he had to have worked there for at least year and they had to have the petition to transfer employees already approved, and it was still a lot of paperwork then an appointment at the embassy. You also get H1B1 employment visas but that mist be employer sponsored, they’re hard to come by because the company has prove they couldn’t hire a citizen and the number of them is capped. Anything else is going to highly specialised eg university professor or I’ve heard of guys from New Zealand getting H visas to temporarily operate ski lifts at Aspen. Informal retail job definitely won’t cut it.

Doubtful re money.
and how easy is it to get a blue collar type job in the states from here (I’m thinking very unlikely, only really someone skilled in a particular profession type ones but I might be wrong)

Her DH’s future US employer (“sponsor“) needs to get an approved ETA form from the U.S. DOL before they can file her immigrant petition with USCIS. The form is basically to confirm that there isn’t a US American available, qualified and willing to fill the offered position at a suitable wage. It’s quite a difficult and expensive process and usually done by agencies or attorneys.

His current job is a tradesperson

You have to give it to them for their chutzpah, but they aren't getting a visa.

Yes generally speaking one of you has to be highly skilled in a field where they need someone and sponsored by an employer. Then depending on visa category the trailing spouse may be authorised to work, and then they could do manual work if they wanted to. So DH had an L1A visa (intercompany transfer executive), I had an L2 trailing spouse visa and through that I was allowed to work wherever I wanted so long as his visa and therefore mine remained valid.

Could they have won the lottery, be going for an investor visa and just not told anyone???

Brits aren't eligible for the lottery, are they Irish? The USA is really hard to move to as Brits.
We did it on L1/2 visas, which required a high level company transfer, a lot of paperwork from both company and employee.
They have to be renewed every few years and if you lose your job you have to leave.
We now have green cards but that is also expensive and time consuming and can only happen after living in the USA for several years using some other legal means.

My mistake I realize you mean the UK national lottery, investor visas could work.

I was wondering the actual lotto or euro millions because there are investor visas, so if he has whatever the required sum of money is and/or be planning on opening a contracting business that will employee a lot of people… maybe there’s something there. I don’t know the ins/outs but it is a visa class.

Good point about the green card lottery though! Brits can’t apply but lots of other European nationalities can. But you’re more likely to win the actual lottery it’s that unlikely and if that were the case I would think they’d be more likely to say so… whereas there’s a lot of reason why they’d be keep quiet about a large lottery win. Both are quite far fetched though- more likely they’re just really stupid either through naivety by thinking this is actually a goer or just down right idiocy if they think they can lie and then work illegally off an extended tourist visa.

I think it’s wilful naivety rather than illegality - they haven’t at all
mentioned working off a tourist visa, they really do think they’re going to be handed a visa at this appointment in Feb 🤦🏼‍♀️.
no chance they’ve got a secret stash of cash unfortunately.

now to figure out how to broach this with her as they’re making decisions now that have implications for when they inevitably have to stay

Thanks everyone for your knowledge!

Please keep us updated!

They’re making decisions now that have implications about when they leave WTF?? I know she’s a friend so I don’t want to sound too harsh but do you think you can actually reason with that level of daft? I didn’t make any arrangements to leave the UK before our visas were approved and that was knowing that the employer already had blanket approval and we met every criteria! Could you ask her what category of visa they’re applying for and say that you’ve heard they’re very hard to get? If you really want to get involved, and I don’t know that I would tbh because you’ll probably just get accused of crushing her dreams, there’s a list of every single visa category here, so she can see what ones (probably none except B2 tourist) she would be eligible for.
https://travel.state.gov/content/travel/en/us-visas/visa-information-resources/all-visa-categories.html

Do they have passports other than British? Maybe they have won the green card lottery thing that the US do. So many green cards from the Diversity immigrant visa program go to people from all over the world.

I have a relative married to a US citizen and it took almost 2 years for their spouse visa to be approved

They are from 2025 actually (so can apply next year).

It's so hard to get a visa.
The US is so expensive as well, health insurance you typically contribute to even if employer pays part of it so she could be looking at 700-1200$ a month to cover them, it's like a rent payment. Rent is so expensive. Food I reckon is almost double the cost in the UK.
If he has a job lined up that is well paid and they will sponsor a visa it may be different but if they have family back in the UK, they may well miss them.
I think you take for granted the good things about life in the UK until you no longer have them.

Did you speak to your friend again about this? Does she still think they will be going?

They won't be getting a visa