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  2. An Ancestral Visa

  The ancestral visa enables those with a grandmother or grandfather born in the UK to live in the UK for four years and eventually apply to stay permanently. Those living in the UK under this visa also have free access to the labor market upon entry. You have no idea how cool this is. Or how rare it is. It basically means you can work wherever you want and for whomever you want (be it Starbucks or Saatchi & Saatchi) without government restrictions. Of course you don’t have recourse to public funds (the UK equivalent of welfare or food stamps), but that is par for the course with all visas.

  I have to admit that I get really, really envious of people who have this option. So if you’re eligible for it, thank the heavens for blessing you with such wonderful lineage and start applying!

  3. A Religious Visa

  This visa caters to those seeking to come to the UK to work as part of a bona fide religious organization (think ordained ministers, monks, nuns, missionaries, etc.). If you don’t mind knocking on strangers’ doors, passing out religious flyers, or committing to a life of celibacy and/or silence, then this is an excellent visa option. However, I would imagine that this visa is counterproductive when it comes to finding an aristocratic husband.

  4. EU Citizenship

  I’m warning you right now that this option is rather convoluted and may or may not require giving up your US passport in the process, as many EU countries don’t allow dual citizenship. But I’m not one to judge your level of determination when it comes to making your English dream come true, so I might as well throw it out there.

  Basically, if you are willing and able to live in another EU country (Portugal, for example) long enough to gain citizenship in that country, then as a EU citizen you are free to live and work in other EU member states—including the United Kingdom. Currently there are twenty-seven EU member states to choose from.

  In almost all cases, there is a residence requirement of at least two years. Although I highly encourage you to do your own research (just Google various embassies for info), from what I can tell, Spain and Ireland have the fewest restrictions, along with some of the newer Eastern European countries that are trying to attract Western workers. Countries like Germany or Sweden are known for having tougher regulations.

  Again, if you have a parent who was born in any of the twenty-seven EU countries, you may be eligible for citizenship, and once you’ve obtained it, you will be able to live and work in the UK! So if you’re lucky enough to have family connections—use them!

  5. Transferring to the UK with a US Company

  Getting transferred to the UK office of the American company that you’re already working for in the US is one of the easier options available. (This is because your American company handles all of the Home Office paperwork and expense.) Talk to your boss and HR manager and feel out what opportunities may be available to you in the UK—or even in the EU (see option 4). Believe it or not, not everyone is dying to drop everything and move overseas, and frequently companies are happy to have someone like you step forward for a transfer. No matter what, it can’t hurt to ask. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

  If your current employer does not have an office overseas—find one that does. Get hired by them in America, give them at least eighteen months of your time, and then kindly request a transfer to London.

  6. Getting Sponsored by a UK Company

  This option is difficult, but it is not impossible. It involves coming to the UK (as a tourist4 or student) and applying for jobs like a normal person. Except you’re not a normal person—your life and your fantastic English future depend on getting sponsored by a UK company, so you’d better throw yourself into this job hunt 110 percent.

  First create a CV (curriculum vitae) instead of a résumé. (This can be kind of fun because unlike American résumés, CVs can be two to three pages long and contain every single detail about your employment and educational history. No need to summarize your multitude of fabulous skills!) Of course you should send the CVs out to specific companies you’d really like to work for, but to be safe, I suggest blanketing the entire country with them. Don’t forget to post your CV online, and to check job listings daily. (Monster, Jobsite.co.uk, and Guardian Online are good places to start.) Sending your CV to anyone and everyone you know that lives in London is also a good idea. Reach out to your university and sorority alumni; ask your parents if they have any British friends. It doesn’t matter how tenuous the link—take any contacts that are proffered to you. Networking is a distinctly American strength—use it.

  Buy yourself a few snappy suits because soon you’ll start interviewing and eventually you’ll get a job offer. (Trust me, it will happen. You’re smart, charming, and well-presented. In fact, without even trying, you’ll probably be the best-dressed person in the building. And since you’re American, you’ll also be refreshingly candid and eager. Employers will be falling over themselves to hire you.) The caveat to this, of course, is the tiny fact that you need a work permit. Employers are usually scared of sponsoring Americans because the Home Office makes it sound like a horrifically time-consuming and expensive process with tons of legal pitfalls that might get them into trouble. I’m not saying the sponsoring process is a joyride, but it’s really not as bad as most UK employers tend to think.

  Your employer must hold or obtain a sponsorship license, and once they have this it costs them nothing to apply for a visa on your behalf. The Home Office only doles out a set quota of sponsorship visas per month for entry-level jobs (with a minimum salary of £20k/year), but you and your potential employer are free to reapply every month until you get one.

  A common myth is that your employer has to prove that you are better qualified for the job than anyone in the UK, EU, or Commonwealth. This is fundamentally not true. What your employer does have to prove is that you are better qualified for the job than anyone else in the world who’s applied for it.

  The Home Office requires your employer to advertise the position. Don’t panic; placing one ad in an English-language EU newspaper with relatively low circulation counts as advertising. The ad should list every single qualification required for the position, making sure that you possess all of them. Every CV received in response to this ad must be examined with a fine-toothed comb, and if the candidate is missing even one of these qualifications he or she can be discounted. Eventually (hopefully) you will emerge as the most qualified candidate out of those who applied!

  Some employers are nice enough to let you manage the above process for them. Others will insist on hiring an immigration lawyer to make sure it’s done correctly. However, legal fees for this sort of thing can run between $3,000 and $5,000—which, as you can imagine, is quite an expensive gamble for an employer to take on behalf of a fresh-faced American they’ve only just met. If you can, offer to pay the legal fees (or have them deducted from your salary). This is a nice gesture which shows your dedication to the company.

  The drawback of getting a sponsored work permit is if you decide to change jobs or leave the company, the visa is no longer valid and you must return to the US. With this option, it’s hugely important to weigh up the strength of your love for England with your ultimate long-term career path.

  7. Marriage to an Englishman (Preferably One with a Castle)

  As this is the definitive goal anyway, you can probably stop reading this book. You’re in love! Hurray! Not only have you found your English soul mate, but your geographical problems are solved and you can get started on redecorating that poor, neglected castle.

  At one point, I wanted to live in the UK so badly that I briefly and very seriously considered marrying my gay best friend. Other than his sexual preference, he was pretty much everything I was looking for: cute, English, smart, funny. Not only would I have been able to live in England, the country of my dreams, I would have had a blast being his pretend wife! (Oh, the glamorous London parties we would go to! The gorgeously furnished flat we would share!) But this fantasy lasted approximate
ly four days because more than several (rather humorless) people reminded me that it was against the law.

  So that’s the catch: Your marriage must be genuine. When it comes to this, the Home Office has eyes in the back of its head, and they will find out if you’re faking a relationship just to live in the UK. At the end of the day, marrying someone just to stay in the country is illegal and can get you into very, very big trouble.

  Still, that doesn’t mean that finding true love and authentic marriage material in London is impossible. Not at all! The above is just a word of warning to prevent you from wasting a week contemplating marriage to your version of Rupert Everett.

  Whether your fairy tale betrothal is the outcome of a whirlwind romance or something more enduring, any American girl marrying an Englishman must relinquish her passport to the Home Office for more than two months, provide multiple witness statements as to the validity of her relationship, and pay a fee of nearly $1,000. (What can I say? Home Office staffers aren’t exactly die-hard romantics.)

  Once approved, you can then apply for permanent UK residence (not citizenship—that comes even later). Still, with a little perseverance, more paperwork, more Home Office fees, and a stringent UK citizenship test, in due course the Queen of England can be your queen too. And I ask you: If that’s not worth the bureaucratic hassle, what is?

  Note:

  Please keep in mind that the Home Office changes their rules around all the time so please double-check with them or a reputable immigration lawyer before moving ahead with any of these options. (Also, beware of third party agencies that charge additional fees for handling your application—always apply directly to the Home Office or through a solicitor.)

  Make sure to read the Home Office “guidance notes” carefully, and be certain you are reading the most recent version of these notes (they update about every eight weeks or so). I realize it’s annoying to read through sixty-plus pages of fine print, but when it comes to something as important as your immigration status, you need to err on the side of paranoia. Make sure you convert dollars to pounds correctly, make sure you send in original bank statements (not copies), and make sure your bank account is in your name only (not a joint account with your parents).

  I actually know someone whose visa application was rejected because he was “almost smiling” in his passport photo. It’s true! I wish I could blame this on the sheer grumpiness of the Home Office—and partly I do. But apparently potential visa holders have been ordered not to look even remotely happy in their photos to avoid confusing the facial recognition scanners that are used at UK airports.

  But it doesn’t really matter—even if you look miserable in your application photo, the euphoria you feel when that UK visa is finally in your hands is probably akin to what you will feel upon the delivery of your firstborn child. So frown like you mean it.

  USEFUL WEBSITES:

  Student Aid on the Web—information from the US Department of Education on funding education beyond high school. http://studentaid.ed.gov/PORTALSWebApp/students/english/index.jsp

  The UK Border Agency at the Home Office—where you can download all the forms and guidance. www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/

  The UK Council of Student Affairs—where you can find all the latest immigration info for international students. www.ukcisa.org.uk

  SOME REPUTABLE UK LAW FIRMS:

  Xchanging Global Mobility Services www.xchanging.com/XGMS/XGMSServices/Immigration.html

  CMS Cameron McKenna www.cms-cmck.com/Immigration

  Fisher Meredith www.fishermeredith.co.uk

  Dearson Winyard International www.dwiglobal.com

  London Is the Best Place to Live on Earth. But Where Is the Best Place to Live in London?

  If you’re not going to come to the UK on a student visa, chances are that you will live in London. Without a shadow of a doubt, London is the most magical, the most beguiling, and the most charming city on the planet.

  Whereas New York has the thrill of world finance and groundbreaking theater, Los Angeles boasts timeless Hollywood glamour, and Washington, DC, brings the buzz of power and politics—London has all of these things in one place. Nowhere else can you find economic, political, and artistic epicenters of such intense, global caliber rolled together into a single cosmopolitan capital.

  Many compare London to Manhattan, but the truth is that London is far more elegant, the architecture is more beautiful, the streets are much cleaner, and the people are much calmer. I tend to get claustrophobic in New York, as you can walk for blocks among the towering scrapers without ever glimpsing the horizon. This is not the case in London. For almost 250 years, it was against the law to construct anything taller than St. Paul’s Cathedral (365 feet high) so you can walk for miles without ever feeling trapped or overpowered by the city.

  While New York is a true American melting pot, London is a collection of dozens upon dozens of distinct little villages. Every tube stop leads you to a new and extremely unique part of the capital, and there are so many secret alleyways and hidden courtyards, it’s a city you can make your own like nowhere else. (A great way to get to know the city when you first arrive is to go on the Circle Line train and have a drink at every stop!)

  On top of this, more than 30 percent of London is made up of sprawling parkland and manicured gardens—most of these were originally owned by the British royal family and used as their private hunting grounds before they were turned into public parks. With more than 5,550 acres of parks, ponds, forests, and flowers, London boasts more green space that any other major city in the world.

  When I first arrived in London, I began walking everywhere, park after park, bridge after bridge, hardly knowing where I was going or where I had been. And hardly caring, because every single step seemed to feed my very soul.

  On the second or third day, sometime in the early evening, I walked from the splashing fountains and giant lions of Trafalgar Square, past the famous door of 10 Downing Street, and then, suddenly, when I turned the corner, I was face-to-face with Big Ben. I found myself just standing there, gazing up into the rare blue sky at this magnificent clock tower that gleamed in the sunlight. I couldn’t look away. Because all at once everything in my crazy heart and mind seemed to fall into place. Right in front of me was all the glory and sparkle that I knew my London life was going to be once I figured out how to grab on to it. After all those years of trying to escape everything around me, I suddenly felt something I’d never felt before: the desire to stay in one place forever.

  Finding a Flatshare

  So you have your visa in your hands, you’ve said your good-byes to large American appliances, hot summers, and good water pressure, and you’re ready to move to the city of your dreams.

  Unless you’re a secret billionaire, it’s doubtful you will be able to afford to live somewhere in London on your own. Which means you must seek out a flatshare, which is an apartment shared by two to six people.

  I know sharing houses with strangers is not commonly done in the US unless you’re a starving student, but in London it’s a pretty ordinary occurrence, even for well-bred, twenty-something professionals. Sharing is the best way to get a large, good-quality flat at an affordable price, and I promise you’ll get over the weirdness of sharing a bathroom with people you don’t know pretty quickly.

  There are many ways to approach flat hunting. Finding a room through a friend of a friend of a friend is by far the best option, so start by asking people you know if they happen to know anyone with a room for rent and to spread the word that you are looking. Post your request on Facebook and send a mass email to everyone you can think of who might know somebody in London. Again, if applicable, contact your college and sorority alumni networks.

  If you already have a British friend (or handful of friends) that you want to live with, it costs you nothing to go through a Realtor (aka an estate agent) to help you find a furnished flat. (Rightmove.co.uk is a good place to start.) But if you know no one, then grab a notebook, grab your
phone, and log onto all of the following:

  www.flatshare.com

  www.spareroom.co.uk

  www.intolondon.com

  www.roombuddies.com

  www.uk.easyroommate.com

  www.gumtree.com

  www.london.craigslist.co.uk

  www.loot.com

  All of these websites are filled with flatshares seeking flatmates, and most are categorized by price and location. (PS: Don’t start searching more than one month ahead of when you’d like to move, as turnaround in London is quick.)

  When I finished my master’s degree, moved out of my awful British dorm, and began to embark upon my first London flat search, my specifications were simple: I was looking for a friendly, English household full of young, non-married nobility begging to adopt an American. But as time wore on and my search continued, I was shocked to discover that even though London is the capital of England, the city seemed to contain very few actual English people. (And as for well-bred, English twenty-somethings desperate to take in a homeless American? Again, I blame my fantasies on Hugh Grant movies.)

  Something like a third of Londoners (and if you’re there right now—this includes you) were not even born in the UK, and many London-based universities (especially the London School of Economics) are nothing more than hubs for wealthy foreign students, because most English students tend to go to college outside of the capital.

  I’m not going to lie—meeting English people in London can be difficult. And because of this, it’s all too easy to fall back on what you know. It’s all too easy to start hanging out with other Americans and to start passing the time by drinking American beer in American-themed sports bars.

  I don’t know about you, but I was determined to do nothing of the sort. If I was going to be spending all my time with other Americans, I figured that I might as well give up on my English dream, go back to America, be near my American friends, get a nice American job, meet a nice American guy, and save myself and everyone else the transatlantic hassle.