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Relocation Advice


Josh Watanabe's picture
By Josh Watanabe - Posted on
24 July 2011
I am looking for anyone who has advice on relocating, beginning from scratch. My wife and I are looking to uproot and begin again somewhere else but finding employment and the legal ability to work are daunting. Any helpers?
Stephanie's picture
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Last seen: 5 weeks 4 days ago
Joined: 04/19/2010

Living in:
Cape Town, South Africa

From:
Charlotte, North Carolina (the USA)

Stephanie's Website
The first thing you'll need to decide is where you want to relocate too! It's a big bad world out there, and if you're looking to move most likely there's some things that you're looking to get out of changing locations. Think carefully about what those things are and then do some research. Every country is different, and so the logistics surrounding getting appropriate visas vary. If you can be more specific I can def offer some more focused advice.
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Josh Watanabe's picture
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Last seen: 42 weeks 5 days ago
Joined: 07/24/2011

Hi Stephanie,
Thanks for the response. As far as country, we have decided that Northern England or Ireland is the best place to start. We have little foreign language training so an English-speaking country is needed. Beyond that, we know that finding employment is critical, we are not dropping everything and just going without a plan, it has taken a long to time to decide to this much.
Thanks again!

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Stephanie's picture
Offline
Last seen: 5 weeks 4 days ago
Joined: 04/19/2010

Living in:
Cape Town, South Africa

From:
Charlotte, North Carolina (the USA)

Stephanie's Website
Hi Josh-

Yes, you'll certainly want to concentrate on finding employment first and foremost. The UK just recently revised their visa policy, and though I don't want to discourage you, it's become even more difficult to obtain a work permit.

With only a few outstanding exceptions you're now required to have a job offer and a sponsoring company to apply for the proper documentation. I'm not sure where you're coming from, so perhaps you have options to obtain a European or UK passport through ancestry; or based on commonwealth agreements.

If not, recruitment agencies or applying for positions within multinational organisations is probably  your best bet.

I also strongly suggest taking a trip to your decided location and familiarising yourself with different areas of the city so you can begin to visualise where you'd like to live.

It's difficult to give you much advice without you having a job, this is the most important part of relocation to this part of the world, unless you're content to work in restaurants and bars - at which point it's not toooooo difficult to find work under the table.

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Anonymous
Anonymous's picture

You have to consider what type of work you prefer to do and then consider the destination needs ,this may tighten your search.
Nahla

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