Your degree’s in Latin?
Part of the process of moving to London involves my getting a work permit to be able to reside and work in the U.K. I was able to get some initial advice through the UK Trade and Investment Board. After considering working with a law firm, I decided that I could save the company money by putting together my Visa application myself. Luckily, I am able to apply under the Highly Skilled Migrant Program (HSMP). It’s a fairly straight forward way to apply, where you qualify by demonstrating that you meet a certain number of qualifications such as education level, prior earnings, competency in English, etc.
The only difficulty is that you are required to provide original documentation supporting everything. And in some cases that isn’t even enough. For instance, my degree from Yale is issued in Latin… so I had to get an official translated version of the degree. Luckily, this seems to be a fairly common request that Yale gets and they helped me take care of it. Other items I had to provide included wage slips from Higher One, an original birth certificate, and a letter from my dean at Yale stating that my degree was taught in English (I don’t know if any engineering degree is really in “English”), but at least that’s the language they claimed the textbooks were in 
. Everything’s been sent, so now I just wait and see. I did file a petition to make urgent so hopefully it will be processed quickly. Then I have to go to a consulate to get the entry approval…
Leave a Reply