Immigration to the UK
(2021)
Not really a project, but required an immense amount of planning. July 2021 I decided to immigrate to the UK. Had always wanted to leave South Africa. The eventual catalyst was the South African riots in Johannesburg and Durban. By December 2021 I was in London starting a new job. Some of the problems to solve included: selling a household worth of goods (100+ items sold on Facebook marketplace); selling my car; finding a job in London, although fairly straightforward given my work experience; getting a visa for my partner at the time; finding a place to live in London with not having been there as an adult, or not knowing anyone in the city; tax immigration; cancelling bills, subscriptions, and bank accounts (not everything could be done online in South Africa); dealing with covid hotels; transferring money internationally. It was surprisingly challenging to find a decent place to live in London.
Here are some lessons learned:
- It is useful to have somebody in the country that you know. Not necessarily someone in the same city but someone who is familiar with the nuances.
- Prior to undertaking the move, I had a conversation with an immigration expert. It was a small fee to pay but really gave some good insight.
- Tax immigration from South Africa was not so straight forward. Again I sort advice from various companies and found a company to complete it on my behalf. Before settling on a company I had a free consultation session with a tax lawyer. After which they gave a very pricey quote. I did not choose to go with them but ideally you should get multiple quotes and search online for social media groups where these lessons learned are discussed.
- In general, you should pay people to do tasks for you as much as possible as the to-do list is large for this kind of project.
- Planning the move out on Miro in flow diagram form was a big help. Visualizing when tasks should be undertaken allows you to focus on which task should be done now and what can be done later on.
- Having electronic versions of all important documents helps tremendously. There are many sign up forms and submittals of evidence that you will experience. Having easy access to everything on a neat storage system on the cloud is therefore ideal.
- Scour bank account statements, old emails, and apps on your phone and put together an almighty list of subscriptions, accounts, and contracts to cancel. Then start tackling them one by one.
- Having little to no loose ends is ideal as dealing with developing country governments remotely is challenging.
- Upon arrival you should be ruthless at figuring everything out, ask many questions, make mistakes, and learn quickly. You won’t feel like an imposter for very long.
