ajax

NNH, please let me just add the following:

If your wife enters the UK under tourist status, it will not be possible for her to convert her tourist-visa status to resident status whilst present in the UK. She will need to apply for resident entry clearance whilst outside of the UK from the country of her legal residence (most likely the USA unless she is legally resident elsewhere). She will almost certainly need to leave her passport with the consulate/embassy in this country of residence and it will remain in their possession whilst being processed. She will then need to re-enter the UK under this different status.

It would be well worth your while to double-check on these rules ASAP so that you are not caught out.

NNH

Thanks for all the helpful advice and expertise! I should know in the next 2-3 weeks if we are definitely moving, and I will be very careful to go about the paperwork in the right way.
I will probably be moving 2-3 months before my wife in any case, as she tidies up a few things in the USA, so we will aim to use that time to sort out her residency. My Green Card will remain valid for at least a year, so I think I'll do most of the commuting I guess.
Thanks again
Simon

gaelflyer

As the OP describes himself as an Anglo-Irish expat, he may be entitled to an Irish passport. In which case the EU loophole mentioned above may be useful to expedite things. Not sure if applies when moving from a non EU country though.

Aviatrix

I am fairly certain that EU Free Movement rights apply regardless of last place of residence, and an Irish citizen could indeed move here with a non-EU spouse with relatively few formalities since EU rules would apply rather than UK legislation. However, I don't know how the EU authorities view this when someone is a dual national.

Christopher

I don't think that is a problem. The only thing is if, in the future, Mrs NNH wanted to naturalise as a British citizen, she would not be entitled to the more lenient provisions that would apply as a spouse of a British citizen – not, that is, without a bit of jumping through hoops to clarify/alter her status.

Aviatrix

Not that it really makes a lot of difference... but I meant "UK authorities" in my last post, not EU.

Would have gone and quietly corrected it, but then there would have been a mismatch between my original post and the subsequent quoted post!

ajax

Am I thick? I've read through this thread three times and cannot find anywhere where the OP refers to himself as "Anglo-Irish."

NNH

Only in my profile on the left. I'm a British citizen, but entitled to Irish nationality through both sides of the family. I've come close to exercising that option a few times, but never went through with it.
Interestingly enough, although Mrs NNH was born a US citizen, both her parents immigrated from Romania, so there is another potential EU mechanism for me to investigate.

ajax

D'oh!

Aviatrix

Not sure what the situation is with Romania... new EU member states don't get full free movement rights for the first few years; don't know if Romania is past that stage yet.

If you don't currently have an Irish passport, and your wife doesn't currently hold Romanian citizenship, then it's probably just as easy to go the route originally suggested, i.e., apply for your wife to settle in the UK on the basis that she is the spouse of a UK national. The other two routes would probably involve similar amounts of bureaucracy.

NNH

You're right that Romanians won't have full freedom of employment till 2012. However, the Romanian spouse of a British citizen is already exempt from the employment restrictions.

Getting Irish nationality would be straightforward but very slow. Romania has just opened a brand new citizenship office that apparently expedites cases like my wife's family. Still, I think you're right to say it'll probably be simpler to go the normal route as the American spouse of a British citizen - not least because acquiring new citizenships can have unpredicted new obligations.

HIDDY

The process is quite straightforward from what I remember......as long as you have all the relevant documentation. It may vary according to your spouses nationality.

My Argentine wife and I went to the British Embassy in Buenos Aires......as has been stated before it is a lot easier to get it sorted out before entering the UK.
We were interviewed separately and asked about our realtionship to see if our stories matched I suppose - this surprised me I must say.
I had also to prove I had the means in the UK to support her...bank account statements, proof of employment and a place of residence.
We paid the fee which was quite a lot of money - she got a permanent resident visa in her passport and that was it.

After the three years in the UK she got British nationality.....that was probably an even easier process.

It was certainly a lot easier for her than it has been for me since coming to Argentina to live permanently....in fact it's a bureaucratic nightmare.

Christopher

I think that's right. To answer Aviatrix's point above, the UK authorities wouldn't object to your using your Irish nationality (once you could prove it), but in the long-term I think it's better to do it the "regulation" way: as I say, for one thing it would simplify significantly the requirements that she would have to fulfil if she were to want to naturalise as a British citizen in the future — that's as things stand now, and even if the mooted changes to immigration/nationality law were to take effect, it is likely that spouses of British citizens will still have easier access to naturalisation than spouses of citizens of other EU countries.

On the whole, the granting of spouse visas to people in your sort of position is usually fairly straightforward and reasonably quick.

One other point to consider, perhaps: are you eligible for naturalisation as a US citizen, and if so have you thought about doing that? Once you cease living in the US, your residency rights there become precarious, at best, whereas if you were a US citizen you could of course return at any time. There are certain obligations that US citizens must meet (most notably the filing of annual tax returns — not the same thing as saying that all US citizens resident overseas are liable for US tax), but for most people these are not onerous. You would not need to give up your British citizenship if you did this (as, indeed, your wife would not need to give up her US citizenship if she were to become a British citizen in the fullness of time). Anyway, just a thought.

GUWonder

Daily commutes from Sweden to Denmark are done by Danish citizens with non-EU spouses as are daily commutes done from Ireland to the UK by UK citizens with non-EU spouses.

ajax

I thought that the sponsored-by-a-spouse-for-residence and the three-years-to-naturalisation ability also applied to so-called "settled persons" in the UK, of whom ROI citizens (special among EU citizens due to the complicated relationship btw the UK and the ROI), along with those possessing UK Right of Abode and Indefinite Leave to Remain, were eligible. Am I wrong?