Need some advice please!
 

Hi, my boyfriend is from Florida (born and raised) and I am wanting to go and move over there permanently. When I visited him in July we went to the immigration offices and they just confused me even more. I currently work as a teaching assistant here in the UK, I have a bachelors degree in art and design and I hold a TEFL/TESOL certificate which means I am qualified to teach English as a foreign language. I would love to find out any information from any teachers/teaching assistants who moved over there as to who I should contact. I'm visiting at christmas and returning at easter for 3 months. I'm so confused by it all I just need to see a bit of light at the end of the tunnel or for someone to tell me there isn't any lol!
Thanks guys x

Re: Need some advice please!
 

You can't get a visa to teach, it is effectively, if not actually, impossible. A few private schools might hire foreign teachers needing a visa, but you'd have to have special skills and/or be a superlative performer.

Under your circumstances, the best, and possibly only way for you to get a visa allowing you to live and work in the US is to get married. ..... May I be the first to congratulate you on your up-coming nuptials. :thumbsup:

BTW the US Customs and Immigration Service (USCIS) is not set up to answer questions. Mostly you can't find anyone to answer questions, but even if you do get answers they are often wrong, and cannot be relied on, even if you were deliberately mislead or lied to - the US Supreme court said so in a ruling a few years ago.

Re: Need some advice please!
 

Hi,

Are you also looking for information about the immigration process through marriage to the boyfriend, through a teaching job or just information about getting a teaching job?

Re: Need some advice please!
 

Well eventually we would like to get married. When we visited immigration office they gave us forms for alien fiance and another one for after. I understand that you have to get married within the three months of applying for the alien fiance visa? I was enquiring about teaching jobs or jobs in schools as this is where I have the most experience. I thought maybe contacting Florida Dept for Education and maybe they might give me some ideas. Any help is appreciated, big or small, though
Thanks

Re: Need some advice please!
 

Correct, so that was actually good advice, just perhaps not the advice you were expecting.
No point, they won't sponsor you for a visa. .... Imagine the ruckus there'd be if your local education authority started sponsoring foreign teachers for visas at £3,500-£7,000 a time? .... It's the same in the US - public education is not well funded in the first place, so they aren't going to spend $5,000-$10,000 a time on visas to bringing in foreign teachers.

In any case you will need to go through the Florida teaching certification process, so you won't be fully qualified to teach anyway.

Re: Need some advice please!
 

OK thanks for the advice. I will keep looking. Maybe the best bet is to get married like we plan to do anyway and then look for a job when I'm over there. � ����

Re: Need some advice please!
 

Not quite. Applying for a fiance visa will take around 8-10 months start to finish. You go home, file forms, go to medicals in London, go to an interview in London etc. It will have a validity period of 6 months from your medical (so usually a bit less than 6 months from when it was issued), this is the time period you have to enter the US. Once you have entered the US you have 90 days (not three months) to get married. Then you apply for Adjustment of Status which is when you get your greencard.

Alternatively if you are still in the US right now, you could get married then go home and apply for a spouse visa. Same amount of time roughly but when you enter the US on that visa you'll get your greencard straight away (ish).

Re: Need some advice please!
 

"Best bet"? ...... Almost certainly your only bet. I meant exactly what I said in post #2, above. :nod:

BTW if you get married and apply for a marriage visa (CR-1) you'll be able to work as asson as you arrive and be free to come and go from the US. If you go down the fiancée visa (K-1) route you will likely face a minimum five months when you will not be permitted to work AND you won't be able to leave the US during that period without voiding your application to adjust to a married status and get a green card.

Re: Need some advice please!
 

Good summary, same as mine, worded slightly differently, that's all. ..... Except that arriving on a CR-1 you, functionally speaking, get your green card immediately - the I-551 stamp in your passport IS a green card, and you can report to work immediately, literally right there in the airport if you have a job to go to.

Re: Need some advice please!
 

Thank you for explaining it all to me, really helpful and I'll see where we go from here!

Re: Need some advice please!