immigrate to california
 

i know this may be a bit of along shot, im a british citizen who has been to california 4 times and have fell in love with the place. i would love to immigrate there but its virtually impossible to get a u.s green card. if there is anyone out there who could offer any helpful tips i would be most greatful.

Marry somebody living in CA.

Travel to Canada, cross to US and settle in. Or just come to visit and don't leave. It has worked for 11 million or more.

I do prefer the marry someone in CA idea however.

Find a job with a California based company who will sponsor your citizenship.

yeah- you almost always need a job, first...

My mom is English, and her whole family are still in the U.K. I have one cousin that keeps coming to visit and he also loves it here (in Vegas) and would love to move here. Personally, I don't see why he would want to leave England, but he really does. He is a tile setter and has found out that he cannot keep up with the many illegal's here that do the same work and do it cheaper...it is a catch 22 situation. Really, you can go on the 10+ year long waiting list, or get a work visa and TRY to find someone that will sponsor you, and this in itself is very difficult.
Why do you want to move? What is it about So. Cal. or the U.S. in general? I asked my cousin the same thing and he says "well, it is a better living isn't it?" Is it? We have high crime here compared to Europe, and medical costs are outrageous. I think perhaps he comes here on vacation and doesn't see the full picture, he sees all the fun while visiting. I'm just suggesting that you really think about why you want to make such a major move to a foreign country.

grass is greener on the other side of the fence....and the amount of crime/living expenses really depends WHERE you live in the US....though I'd never live in Vegas or most of Southern CA.

If you are highly educated it is usually possible to get a visa. This means a PhD or MD. However, BS and MS degree holders can also get visas if they are trained in a field that has a high demand for employees (computer programming, engineering, etc.).

As someone who has gone through the very confusing and expensive immigration system to get my Mongolian-born husband a green card, I would tell you to stay where you are!

Even if you do find an American to marry, it's a long, painful and expensive process to become a legal resident (with a green card). You are questioned at every turn by Homeland Security about whether your marriage is real - we had to show them our wedding pics, invitations, & get letters from 2 people verifying our marriage! They question whether or not you are a terrorist, and whether or not you are lying on your application, etc. The whole process is extremely confusing and if you mess up one single little thing on the forms, you have to start over again from scratch. Immigration attorneys can help you through the process, but at almost $300 an hour, I decided to fill out the forms myself. And what a lot of work! I can't imagine how people whose native language is not English even manage to figure what they're asking for on some of these forms!

Having said all that, your options for getting a green card are:

- Marry a US Citizen and stay married to them for at least 3 years (they will check!)

- Find a company to hire you and sponsor you

- Enter the green card lottery (I don't remember how many cards are given out each year, but it's worth a shot)

- Or come here on a Visa, get a job illegally, and then try to work through the system to stay. (Not recommended)

Good luck!

Oh, and when we finally got my husband's green card, his name was wrong on it and I have spent the last year trying to fix it!

right....and people bash the immigrants for coming here illegally....

assuming it's about the weather, would it be easier to learn Spanish, Italian or Greek?

Here's a link on the green card lottery:

http://tinyurl.com/hg6rr

Since OP is from the UK she does not qualify for the lottery. Got any relatives here that can sponsor you?

I think England has a wait list instead of the lottery but like I mentioned before it is over 10+ years wait.

Are you young enough for a college?

Don't know if the laws have changed, but before it was possible to get a student visa, go to college, and this same visa gave you the right for a part-time job.

I think it was valid for 8 years then. It's a long term - you can get disappointed with the US and go back, or you can marry a US citizen.

A college student visa is never valid for 8 years. It is only valid for the amount of time with which the college or advanced degree program is normally completed. A four-year degree will only be granted 4 years, with eligibility for limited extension plus a year of internship with a local company. A Master's degree is also valid, ususlly, for 2 years plus a year for internship.

Unless you have a skill that an employer will want to sponsor you for, you are likely out of luck. The only other alternatives are to apply for political asylum (which isn't available for British citizens), to marry an American, or to qualify for a special category, such as nurses, Soviet scientists, or aliens of Outstanding Ability (such as Nobel prize winners).

Billboy is right. The laws have also changed, and foreign students are now forbidden from working while they are in school. They also must show proof of financial responsibility for the entire cost of their studies, and they pay a tuition rate higher than out of state students. If you do decide to take the student route, study Nursing, and when you graduate, there will be MANY employers willing to sponsor you!

College is not only university. College is also your city college where you can get an AA degree.

The laws do change. About 10 years ago it was a student visa for 4 years renewable to 8 years.

After 9/11 the laws changed a lot re student visas.

dnlmahon, I moved to the US from Scotland when i married my American husband. At that time, it was very easy. After I became a citizen, my brother decided he'd like to move here too. In 1985 he sent in his green card application....and finally heard back in 1996 that he had an appointment at teh US Embassy in London. By then, having gone on with his life, he had lost the enthusiasm to relocate to California. You would probably find the same thing, but you don't even have a relative who is a US citizen.

vegasnative makes a valid point about medical costs (you don't even give them a second thought, do you?), etc. In the US, medical costs are well on their way to causing a major financial disaster for many large companies.

It's a great pity that it's easier to move to the US if you are not a native English speaker or come from a former communist country or a third world country. But if you are from the UK, forget it. Unless, as others have noted, you are a doctor or a nurse or have a PhD in life sciences or an advanced engineering degree, you're probably not going to get in for many,many years, if at all.

Or an advanced degree in quantitative sciences from reputable schools here and abroad. Banks and pharmaceutical companies hire foreigners with these qualifications in droves.

Marrying a US citizen is NOT the fast, easy way to get a green card as it used to be. My cousin married a French lady last January and the last I heard she still doesn't have a green card. She spends as much time as possible in the US on a tourist visa, but she has to go back when it expires.

My cousin and his wife dated for 10 years before getting married, and last year they had a daughter. I think it s/b obvious to the INS this marriage is not a sham to get her a green card.

P_M, (See my post above.) It's been my experience that INS thinks everyone's marriage is only to get a green card. Good luck to your cousin!

It (Green Card) was a cute movie.

I've had 3 friends that won the green card lottery. My best friend who is from New Zealand, another friend from Australia and another from Russia. Of course they were also really well educated (scientist, pediatric neurologist, and another scientist). We think it may not be a "true" lottery but you can give it a try...

I know 2 very well-educated former grad school mates who went on to obtain PhD's in different fields. One was an Aussie and the other was Polish. They submitted lottery applications 2 or 3 times each and none of them won the green card lottery.

Their assessment was that the lottery was "fixed".

British citizens cannot enter the "diversity visa lottery" since their country is not underrepresented in the USA.

A student visa only allows a person to work for 1 year past graduation, after which they must be sponsored by their employer in order to stay. The cap on advanced degree H1B visas for fiscal year 2007 was reached in late July of 2006.

Another way in is to buy an American business, or become a "treaty investor." Unfortunately, this requires a significant $$$ of investment...

But, strangely, Irish citizens can enter the lottery and they are certainly not under-represented. I'm with the "lottery is fixed" group.

I was British when I got offered a job in the US a few years ago and it is a major problem as ChristieP so rightly points out.

The H1-B quota is already used up for the next year or two so a company is not going to keep its job offer open. Another problem is that the H1-B is linked to the job and therefore if you lose your job then your out of the country, unless you can find another employer who will then need to get another H1-B visa which will take another ....& so on.

Some companies get around the problem by saying the person is coming over to learn new things at the company, this might work for a year or so, but any longer and the explanations start to wear thin.

As pointed out there is a category for people with Phd's etc but the majority of people don't have these.

The easiest way I can see is by investing, this can be less than you think, if you have any kind of business background or a good business plan that will employ US citizens, this will improve things. (You can buy an existing business)

I would recommend looking at www.workpermit.com and www.britishexpats.com for advice.

For me, its now a lot easier as I'm also an Australian citizen and last year the US-Australian govts. signed an agreement to allocate 10,000 H1-B style visas per year to Australians,(incidently only about 900 visas were used up in the first year)

Barbara, regarding the fixing of the lottery, I read an interview with a govt official where they were asked, if a married couple applied and one person was from France and the other from Japan would it be better to apply as separate countries or together as one country as is allowed if you're married. The official said it was better to apply as both from France as the percentage winning is greater from Europe than Asia, he also said that people from Africa had a higher chance as well.

Geordie

The one thing is, if you have a PhD and from England, it's apparently easier to fast track getting a green card (if you are already in the country working). I've seen this with almost every Englishman I know and already working here (even without PhD's but engineering or something like that). I've always wondered if it's because of the relationship between England and the US. Is that true? BEcause if it is, it may prove to be a useful factor if dnlmahon does apply....just exploring the possibilities.