Where we
live and work

The short version. Five minutes, mostly pictures. Everything here links to the long page if you want the reasoning underneath it.

Written 30 August 2026, for Munim, Janika, and Munim's mum and dad.

Ink illustration of two people sitting at opposite ends of a table drawn as a stretch of open water, one shore with a terraced house and the other with a pine tree, a calendar resting between them.

The plan we recommend: move to Britain

December 2026 The earliest we are living in the same house with both of us working. Nobody has to approve it and nothing can refuse it.
8 months after filing The earliest Janika is an American permanent resident, arriving able to work on the day she lands.

Read every date on this page the same way

The green card application has not been filed. Nothing has gone to anybody yet. So every date that depends on it is really a length of time measured from a starting gun that has not been fired, and this page now says that rather than dressing it as a calendar. "8 months after filing" means eight months from the day the application goes in, whenever that turns out to be.

The December 2026 date above is the exception, and that is the most useful thing on this page. Britain needs no application, no fee and nobody's permission: Munim is a British citizen and Janika has the permanent right to live and work there. It is the only date here that cannot slip, because it is not waiting on anyone.

The American dates are the ones whose clock has not started. At best they put Janika roughly a year further away than the British plan does. How much further turns out to depend on a second choice nobody had noticed we were making, and that choice matters more than the country does. It is two sections down.

The recommendation below is Britain, and it was tested by an independent lawyer who was given the argument without being told which answer we wanted. It survived, with corrections folded in.

The whole thing on one chart

Three plans, and the same green card application in all three. The only thing that changes is which country we sit in while it is decided. That turns out to change almost everything else. Where a cell says "after filing", the clock starts the day the application goes in, and it has not gone in.

Stay in AmericaMove to BritainMove to Finland
When do we live in the same house? 17 months after filing December 2026, whatever happens to the application February 2027, whatever happens to the application
When can Janika work? 17 months after filing Throughout. She never stops. Throughout. She never stops.
When can Munim work? Throughout, on his student permission Throughout. He is a citizen. Only once Finland grants him a permit
Can Munim leave the country? No. Not once, for about a year. Yes, freely Yes, freely
When is Munim an American permanent resident? About 7 months after filing About 8 months after filing About 8 months after filing
When is Janika? About 17 months after filing The same day as him The same day as him
Does living together depend on the application? Yes. Entirely. No. Not at all. No. Not at all.
Does anyone have to say yes? An American officer Nobody, for the living-together part A Finnish officer, for Munim
Best case in every column, meaning nobody asks a single question at any stage, so read these as the top of the range rather than as the plan. If a question does get asked, which is common, every figure in the America column moves out by months and almost nothing in the Britain column moves at all, because the only dates that matter there are not waiting on a decision.

The green card arrives at roughly the same time on all three plans. What differs is how much of our life we spend waiting for it.

The same two years, drawn twice

Both charts cover the same two years, but the clock starts on the day the application is filed rather than on a calendar date, because nothing has been filed. Green means living where we want to be and allowed to work. Red means neither.

We file +6 months +12 months +18 months +24 months STAY IN AMERICA Munim Cannot leave America Permanent resident, working Janika In Finland. Cannot live or work in America. Able to work at last Together about 17 months after we file MOVE TO BRITAIN Munim Living and working Also an American permanent resident Janika Living and working Also an American permanent resident Together from December 2026, and that date does not wait for the application
Both charts assume the best case. On the America plan the red bar is the whole cost: Janika is in Finland for roughly seventeen months while Munim cannot leave the country to visit her without abandoning the application. On the Britain plan there is no red bar, and the two green bars on the left start whether or not anything is ever filed, because neither of us is waiting for permission to live or work there.

Why Janika's date moves, and the choice underneath it

Munim believed two things, and both are right. Marrying does give Janika a green card off the back of his: the law gives a husband or wife the same category and the same place in the queue as the person applying. And if they are not married by the time he applies, she is added afterwards, so long as they marry before the day he actually becomes a resident. That day is the only deadline in this, and nothing else about the timing of a wedding matters.

Janika has always come to America as a tourist, on the scheme letting European citizens visit for ninety days without applying for a visa first. The trade for that convenience is a rule that has been on the books for decades: if that is how you last entered, you cannot switch to a green card while you are inside the country.

The important word there is "last". The rule looks only at the most recent way she walked in, not at her history and not at her passport. Enter once on a proper visa instead and the rule stops applying to her. So this is a door that is shut while she keeps arriving as a tourist, not a door that is bolted for life, and that opens a third way of doing this that is set out below. Nothing here is a black mark against her. Being a tourist on the visa waiver is precisely the situation the rule was written for.

Three ways to run the American plan, and they are a year apart

BEST. AND NOBODY HAD PUT IT ON THE TABLE. He collects his green card at an embassy as well She is on his application from the start rather than chasing it: one case, one interview, possibly the same day. She keeps working until she flies. WORST. AND IT IS THE PLAN WE WERE ON. He applies from inside America and she follows on behind He becomes a resident alone first. Only then can a further form be sent to start her off, and that form alone takes just over seven months. FAST ON PAPER. EXPENSIVE IN REAL LIFE. She moves to America first, on a visa, and they apply together Her green card could land within weeks of his. But she cannot work at all for about five months, cannot leave for six, and gives up her job to come.
All three end with the same green card. The difference is entirely in what Janika is doing while she waits for it: working in Finland, waiting in Finland, or sitting in Cleveland forbidden to work. The middle option is the one the earlier plan assumed, and it is slower than both of the others while buying nothing that either of them does not already give.

So where does the long American wait come from?

From the order things happen in, not from anything about Janika. If Munim becomes a permanent resident on his own, first, she has to be added afterwards, and adding her has a paperwork stage of its own that must be filed and processed before an embassy will even open a file on her. That stage takes just over seven months in a typical case. Stack it behind his own application and she is roughly seventeen months behind the filing date rather than eight.

Go through an embassy together and that stage does not exist, because she was never behind him in the first place. Where an earlier version of this page gave February 2028 as the American answer, read it as about seventeen months after filing, on the slowest of the three routes above.

The country we live in and the way he collects the green card are two separate decisions. The second one is worth about a year, and until now we had only been making the first.

One thing outside anybody's control

Since around 25 August 2026 the American State Department has paused immigrant visa interviews worldwide, with no announced end date, while it retrains officers. That freezes the embassy stage of every route above, including the one we recommend. It does not change which route is best and it is not a reason to choose a worse one, but it does mean no plan here can be dated with confidence until interviews restart. This is reported by several law firms rather than announced on the State Department's own site, so treat it as likely rather than certain.

Does moving country change the tax bill?

Munim asked whether treaties exist to stop the same money being taxed twice. They do, and for the two of us personally they work. Wages and dividends both get relief, and the combined burden ends up being the higher of the two countries' tax rather than the sum of them.

Where they stop working is the company, not us

Eulia is registered in Delaware, which makes it permanently subject to American company tax. Moving house does not change that. But if we then run it from somewhere else, that country usually decides the company is theirs too, and now two countries both claim it.

You would expect a treaty to settle that. On this one question it does not. The British treaty says that if the two tax offices cannot agree whose company it is, the company gets almost no treaty protection. The Finnish treaty gives it none at all.

None of it bites yet, and that is the practical answer. The company has no profit, so there is no double tax to relieve. What moving costs today is not tax: it is roughly four to fifteen thousand dollars a year in accountants and filings, to keep two sets of books and arrive at a bill of nothing. It becomes real the moment there is profit, and then it needs an actual tax adviser rather than a page like this one.

What happens if it is refused

This matters more than the chances do, so it is worth being exact. In the first half of this year the American government decided 11,896 of these applications and refused 6,486 of them, which is 54.5 per cent. That is from their own published spreadsheet, not from a law firm's blog.

But it should not be applied to Munim, and nobody can give him one that should. Of everyone who applied in that period 2,270 were born in China and 1,469 in India. Sixty-five were born in Britain. No published figure adjusts for the strength of a case or who prepared it. Anyone quoting a personal percentage here is guessing.

Which is fine, because the Britain plan is better whether it is refused or not, and that is a stronger claim than any percentage.

Look at what happens when it succeeds, not only when it fails

On the America plan as we were running it, even the good ending is a year and a half apart. Munim gets his green card, and Janika is still in Finland, still unable to work in America, waiting for a stage that cannot begin until he already has his. That is the version where everything goes right. It is also the version that disappears entirely if he collects his own green card at an embassy rather than from inside the country, which is the point of the three routes above.

On the Britain plan, the bad ending is that we lose a fee and some months while already living together and both working. Nothing about our daily life turns on the answer.

And it need not take a year to find out

For about three thousand dollars the American government will decide the first stage in around nine weeks instead of a year. So the real choice is not between a fast plan and a slow one. It is between finding out early and finding out late, and finding out early costs money rather than time.

Ink illustration of the same two people now sitting side by side on one bench on the same shore, the terraced house and the pine tree both behind them.

What is still genuinely unknown

Three things, listed because a page that only tells you what it knows is not being honest.

What the words mean

Green card
Permanent permission to live and work in America without an employer sponsoring you. Not citizenship, and not a visa.
The petition, and the application
Two steps people run together. The petition asks America to accept that Munim's work is worth having; the application is the request for the green card itself. The first has to succeed before the second can.
The visa waiver
The scheme letting Finnish, British and most European citizens visit for ninety days without a visa. Convenient going in, restrictive coming out.
Embassy processing
Having the green card decided at an American embassy abroad rather than from inside America. You are interviewed there and arrive already a permanent resident.

Where the detail lives