Moving to the UK permanently and gaining citizenship.

[deathschoice]

Hi, there. I heard about your community in immigration and thought I'd post here as well. I read your FAQ and first I'd like to say I am not a student yet (I do plan on going to school sometime in the next few years), don't have any UK relatives, I am not looking to marry a UK citizen and I work from home as a web/graphic designer and have a small internet

Comments

[myfirstkitchen]

I'm afraid the clue is in "It doesn't seem like I qualify for any of them". You don't. A computer graphics supervisor isn't a graphic designer - we have thousands of those spilling out of universities each year, many of them unable to get an agency job and barely scraping a living freelance or unemployed. Computer graphics supervisor is a highly-skilled, experienced role in supervising, managing and administering CG workflow for TV and film. If you aren't doing it yet, the UK doesn't need you. The reason it's a shortage occupation is it's hard to get into and requires years of specific skills and experience - someone who does graphic design from home is not who they have in mind.

Your only options for staying in the UK longer than 6 months are to marry somebody from the UK, come here to do further study (but you'd have to pay through the nose for it, and it wouldn't enable you to stick around afterwards) or get rich quick and come as high-level entrepreneur.

We are riddled with unemployment and the only way a firm can employ somebody from outside the EU is if they can't find anyone remotely suitable from within the entire European Union. This is not you.

[deathschoice]

I figured as much. Thank you. But I also was a tad confused since I do web/graphic design on my own for people who live in entirely different states/countries than I do now so I was just curious about how that would factor in since I wouldn't really be taking job opportunities (seeing as I would be doing the same work for the same people just in a different country)

[myfirstkitchen]

We don't care unless you're making enough money to come in under a Tier 1 so you can pay us lots of taxes. As you aren't a world-leading exceptional talent in your area and your internet and design business has not made you enough money to come here as an entrepreneur with over £200,000 in cash to employ any of us, we don't need you. The government says we're full.