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

[bonoffee]

A few good friends and I are all unemployed, despite having all of us done two degrees and had some work experience. It's ridiculous right now. Youth unemployment is at its highest since '92 and things aren't going to get better soon. I'm from Scotland and I do love living here, it's beautiful in many places, but we have our fair share of problems, too. The whole UK does. It's such a bad time. And you do need more than a couple of visits to really know what a country is about. That's for your own sake.

I did Work Canada in 2008, lived in Vancouver for a year and even then I couldn't get any other job than a retail one, which wasn't what I'd been hoping for but I knew and understood Canadians would be picked over me for a lot of things. A year was a good length of time to like where I was, but when I went home I wasn't heartbroken. There might be a similar scheme you could do where you'd find casual work here for a year, and then you could really get to know the place, find out where exactly you'd want to live and get to know what everything costs (ie, a LOT). What everyone else has said I mostly agree with and you'd probably be hard-pushed to find even casual work but that's my advice if you are really desperate to do anything. I don't know if that sort of thing exists the other way round but it must do - it'll be more of a safety net than uprooting yourself for a country in a big economic mess.