Student Visa
Since I'm paying OUT THE ASS to go to school in the UK, I can get a student visa no problem, and then Reba can get a student dependent one for sure as well. These will let me study, as well as work up to 20 hours/week, and Reba can work full time. However, these visas expire literally the day after I graduate! So, travelling outside of the UK (my plan after graduation) would potentially end up in a situation where I was refused reentry to the UK! This will really screw up my long term UK living plans.
HSMP Visa
After graduation, it's a different story. If I want to stay in the UK, I have to get a different visa. The most logical is the Highly Skilled Migrant (worker) Program Visa. Yes, I, Ean Hernandez, will move overseas at great expense and effort to become a migrant worker! Of course, unlike many other Hernandi, I will not be picking, shucking, digging up, baling or otherwise harvesting anything. HSMP works on a points system... you get a certain number of points for making so much money, a certain amount for have a certain type of job in a certain field, and even a certain amount for being under 28 (no idea why on that one). You have to have 65 points to qualify, and in a fairly obvious attempt to get MBAs into the country, the UK gave graduates from 50 top international business schools 50 free points. Of course, they have to pander to the UK business schools, so regardless of whether or not they are really in the top 50 schools worldwide, there's about 10 UK schools listed there, one of which is Oxford. The upshot is that it is pretty easy for you to get a 1 year HSMP after graduating from Oxford. After is the key idea there, because you have to have graduated to get the 50 points, and my student visa runs out the day I graduate! That could be a sketchy couple of weeks while the HSMP paperwork processes. After the 1st year, I can apply for a 4 or maybe 5 year HSMP extension. Apparently, you don't even have to have a job while on the HSMP, it basically just lets you live there. I think they're figuring that the HSMP "type" is going to get a job though, I certainly am. Reba can work as a dependent on my HSMP, so as long as I have one, she can work in the UK too. I'm not really sure that she'll qualify for one on her own, but as long as I've got one, we're cool.
UK Passport
Here's a wacky option: Reba's dad was born in the UK (granny was a war bride), and lived there for about 1 year while grandpa did some gnarly clean-up duty in some German concentration camps. When gramps finished up, the whole family went back to the states. So, while my father in law is about as English as English Bob... (that's funny, because his name IS Bob) for some goofy reason Reba is entitled to a UK passport, which gives her dual citizenship, I think. This basically lets her work and live in the UK all she wants. Exactly what this imparts to me is more mysterious, but I'm working on it. The US state dept web site is a little bit crabby on this subject, making vague references to how dual citizenship could screw up your US citizenship...
"...a person who acquires a foreign citizenship by applying for it may lose U.S. citizenship. In order to lose U.S. citizenship, the law requires that the person must apply for the foreign citizenship voluntarily, by free choice, and with the intention to give up U.S. citizenship."
What a bunch of dicks! I'm not too surprised, really. They probably all voted for W. The scuttlebutt out on the internet is a little less sinister:
(from http://www.americanexpats.co.uk/dual.htm)
In order to lose U.S. citizenship, the law requires that the person must apply for the foreign citizenship voluntarily, by free choice, and with the intention to give up U.S. citizenship. NOTE from American Expats In The UK: This means that unless you denounce your U.S. citizenship..you will keep it while having dual citizenship U.S. and U.K.
(from http://www.easyexpat.com/en/faq/departure/q21.htm)
Will I lose US citizenship if I naturalize as a UK citizen?
Many wonder if becoming natualized as a British citizen means losing US citizenship. This is NOT the case as shown below.http://www.usembassy.org.uk/
http://travel.state.gov/travel/
Countries usually do not like to tell you that you are entitled to dual citizenship. As a US citizen, you are perfectly entitle to acquire another nationality and keep your US citizenship. [31-01-05]
(from http://www.richw.org/dualcit/faq.html#noway)
But I thought US law didn't permit one to be a dual citizen -- that if you were (by birth or otherwise), you either had to give up the other citizenship when you came of age, or else you'd lose your US status. And that if you became a citizen of another country, you'd automatically lose your US citizenship. So what's all this talk about dual citizenship?
It indeed used to be the case in the US that you couldn't hold dual citizenship (except in certain cases if you had dual citizenship from birth or childhood, in which case some Supreme Court rulings -- Perkins v. Elg (1939), Mandoli v. Acheson (1952), and Kawakita v. U.S. (1952) -- permitted you to keep both).
However, most of the laws forbidding dual citizenship were struck down in 1967 by the US Supreme Court. The court's decision in this case, Afroyim v. Rusk, as well as a second case in 1980, Vance v. Terrazas, eventually made its way explicitly into the statute books in 1986; up till that time, the old laws were still on the books, but the State Department was effectively under court order to ignore them.
Rules against dual citizenship still apply to some extent to people who wish to become US citizens via naturalization. The Supreme Court chose to leave in place the requirement that new citizens must renounce their old citizenship during US naturalization. However, in practice, the State Department is no longer doing anything in the vast majority of situations where a new citizen's "old country" refuses to recognize the US renunciation.
The official US State Department policy on dual citizenship today is that the United States does not favor it as a matter of policy because of various problems they feel it may cause, but the existence of dual citizenship is recognized in individual cases. That is, if you ask them if you ought to become a dual citizen, they will recommend against doing it; but if you tell them you are a dual citizen, they'll usually say it's OK.
...so, I think it will be cool if Reba gets a UK passport. That will be pretty cool to actually be married to a brit! I always thought they had really sexy voices. :)
Work Visa
The final option I know of is a regular old work visa. I haven't really looked into this, but I think it's really a function of who wants to hire you and if they're willing to hook you up with a visa. I figure that between the post-graduation recruiting events and the internship I work up, I should have a shot at one of these, but I really have no idea. There's enough other options that I will probably back-burner this for now.
ttfn
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