Documentation
Written by Ashley Kelmore, Posted in Move to UK: Before You Go, Visas
Student
If you are applying for a student visa, you will need to provide your offer letter. You will also need a U.S. passport (make sure it doesn’t expire in the next six months) with at least one fully empty sheet that they can affix the visa to.
Work
If you are applying for yourself and your partner or dependent children, you’ll need passports for all, along with proof that they are related to you, or that you have lived together for a certain period of time. For us, that meant our marriage certificate. For those who aren’t married, there is other documentation you’ll need to prove you’re living together. We also had to include our name change order, because we both changed our last name when we married, which meant this version of us has only existed for a few years.
If you’re working with an immigration attorney, they might send you an internal form that asks all the questions that need to be completed on the application. Here are some of the things that we had to look up: you’ll save some time if you have this handy.
- The birth date and birth place of your parents
- The last five times you’ve traveled outside of the US
- The addresses of the last ten places you’ve stayed in the UK (which was a giant pain for us, because we took a road trip through Scotland for our honeymoon)
- If you’ve ever received medical care in the UK, and if so, where you received it
- The last few places you’ve lived
I thought we’d need to do provide more, but I think our status as married made it easier than it would be for someone who has a partner they aren’t married to.