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A friend (or two) of mine and I are planning on renting a flat out somewhere near London sometime next year and we were wondering what steps should we take to become residents and/or citizens (whichever is easier er if they are the same thing) legally. I mean I can't just book a flight departing there and not take a flight back and just start paying rent couldn't I & live off just using cash(i mean maybe temporarily staying under the radar)

Depends where you are from.

watch uk boarder force.

just fly over and rent a place, all you need is a visa and you if you're american you should be sweet for like what, 6months??

http://www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/count ... %20English

Hypefiend wrote:A friend (or two) of mine and I are planning on renting a flat out somewhere near London sometime next year and we were wondering what steps should we take to become residents and/or citizens (whichever is easier er if they are the same thing) legally. I mean I can't just book a flight departing there and not take a flight back and just start paying rent couldn't I & live off just using cash(i mean maybe temporarily staying under the radar)

If you manage this, you'd have to stay under the radar for 12 years.

If you just want to come over for a bit, you can probably come in under a work-while-travelling-for-a-year deal but that will only last a year or so. But you can potentially land a permanent job while you're here that's willing to apply for a work permit for you.

Or you could try to find a job ahead of coming, get them to apply for a work permit, then come over.

To get residency you will need to have stayed here 4 years (could be 5 now) and prove that you've been working and earning money. Typically this will require having a work permit throughout this period.

To apply for citizenship you will need to have stayed here for 10 years with a work permit of some sort, or 12 years regardless.

Rules may have changed and been tightened up recently, but they'll be along those lines. The number of Americans who get deported yearly for staying illegally or past the permitted period is quite high.

goddamn immygintz

Why would you want to come to this shithole right now, we're soon to back in the victorian times.

It makes me laugh every time I hear people say they want to come over here and live, work etc since most of the population is having a hard time paying basic bills as it is! We're kind of lucky in that we have a semi-decent social security system to fall back on when the shit hits the fan though anyone that's not an EU citizen gets shit all...

It's not even as if someone with special skills is needed because we have the whole EU to draw upon potential workers with no visa requirements. However, saying that, apparently there's twice as many non-EU immigrants as EU-originating ones. I was also told by several Japanese students that the visa system for the UK is quite difficult to get in on (I can't judge from personal experience)