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Moving to America
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
Hello,
I want to move to America, specifically California, but there seems to be mountains of red tape to get through. I run my own small business here and so do not have an employer to transfer me or whatever. Can it be done? Can you point me in the right direction? Has anyone done it?
Thanks
I want to move to America, specifically California, but there seems to be mountains of red tape to get through. I run my own small business here and so do not have an employer to transfer me or whatever. Can it be done? Can you point me in the right direction? Has anyone done it?
Thanks
Post edited by JustV on
0
Comments
1) You have to have a confirmed job offer from an American Company who are willing to sponsor your visa application - to get a visa you will have to prove that noone else in the states can do the job you have been offered. This obviously gets easier with age as people become more specialised but if your just out of university unless you have a very very specific degree its almost impossible.
2) If you are an exceptionally tallented person - you can get an exceptionall persons visa - this normally means you have to be a film star, published author etc
3) You can buy/invest in a small buisness - the minimum investment is $500,000 in a deprived area or $1million in a normal area (i.e most of Cali).
Thank you for your reply anyway
You could also apply for the Green Card Lottery - where a certain ammount of people get green cards annually - but millions of people probably apply for a very limited number of green cards.
You would need to go through the proper application process for applying to stay once married to the American - which could take longer than 90 days. If you reached the end of the 90 days without the application having been processed then you would have to leave the US and then return once your green card had been approved.
Try Craigslist. There are lots of Americans out there who want EU residency, fake marriage, you get a green card and they get EU residency... Dunno of anybody actually doing it but have seen a few posts on there of people looking into it. (Of course a sham marriage would be totally illegal and you'd prob need to convince officials and stuff that the marriage is legit).