Hi all,
I am going start a new thread for this topic and I am not sure if this applies to others but it applies to my husband (who is a US citizen) and myself (who is a Danish citizen) and I hope some of you can help me on some of the points below. This post is a bit of a mix between what worries me, what confuses me and how to go about job hunting 🙂
We are planning a move to Dublin next summer (probably August) and our biggest question right now is how easy it will be for my husband to get a job permit and a job. We are both currently employed but expect that it will be easier for him to get a job in Dublin while it might take longer for me. He is a solutions architect for a telecom company and has over ten years experience. I recently switched careers from nonprofit fundraising to public health. I graduated with a masters of public health last summer and am now working on a one year project to implement a patient portal for a local healthcare organization. Before that I worked in mental health promotion for about three years.
As far as common knowledge goes, there are many opportunities in the tech sector in Ireland so in theory my husband should not have a hard time getting a job. But at the same time, as far as I have read, as the person with EU citizenship I need to be employed within three months of arriving in Ireland and the spouse has to wait some amount of time before they can get a work permit. Does anyone know how long after we arrive my husband can start working if he emigrates as an EU spouse? Should he try to get a green card from here before we arrive? Is it reasonable to expect that he can find a job within a few months?
It feels scary to me to move without either of us having a job but I expect that I will have to do more networking and exploration which is best done when we get there while I'm unsure of my husbands status. We are planning a trip in the spring to do networking, and if possible, interviewing. How long in advance would you all recommend that we go in order to sync up well with hiring in Ireland? Can we expect to go be able to interview 4-5 months before we will be getting there or is 1-2 months better?
Finally, my goal is to end up in health care management in some capacity. I essentially enjoy project management types of tasks in a health setting - it could be a hospital, a local nonprofit, a private corporation. Like I said, I am currently the project manager implementing a patient portal for an organization serving low income pediatric patients north of Denver, CO. My job duties include managing budgets and timelines, working with our electronic health records vendor, working with providers and medical assistants to enroll patients in the portal and to use it to reach patients, working with patients directly to make sure they know about the functions of the portal, conducting focus groups and one-on-one interviews with the different stakeholders and more. I imagine that jobs like that exist in Dublin but I am not sure what they would be called and where people are employed? Is that mainly a kind of function that takes place in the HSE? Or? Any guidance, thoughts and suggestions would be much, much appreciated!
Thank you all 🙂 This moving business is exciting but also anxiety provoking!!
Best,
Rikke
The EU family unification rights apply.
You should be able to apply for a resident card, and have the fees waived. Once you have that status, you can freely work is my understanding. Both Ireland and the UK use their sovereignty over their own citizens to apply different rules to their own citizens that are more restrictive which is part of why the second link below says they don't take applications for family members of Irish citizens.
Here are some helpful resources:
http://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/moving_country/moving_to_ireland/rights_of_residence_in_ireland/residence_rights_of_family_members.html
http://www.inis.gov.ie/en/INIS/Pages/EU%20Treaty%20Rights
A PDF brochure about it:
http://immigrantcouncil.ie/rights/citizenship/4
@katemreagan - is this a similar situation to yours? i.e. One EU national, and one non-EU.
To be honest, I am not really sure. We are in a slightly different situation than Rikke. This is the first time I have read about needing to find a job within 3 months as an EU citizen, so either I wasn't looking hard enough or I just wasn't paying attention :-/
My husband will be getting EU citizenship through me early next year. Italy allows spouses to have citizenship after 3 years of marriage without fulfilling any type of residency. Prior to this August, he would have received the citizenship on the same application as me, however now it is a separate process (more red tape). Once our marriage is recorded in Italy, which it is being done now, and we pay for a background check on my husband as well as his own application fee, he will then be an EU citizen as well.
We are also in a different boat since we will be moving with jobs already in place through our current employers.
I would definitely say that it would be better to find employment prior to the move. However, that can be tricky because as Rikke said her husband has the tech skills which is more preferable but employers won't even consider you as an applicant without a working permit/visa already in place.
Rikke, can your husband work remotely for his current employer? If not, you may actually be in a better position to find a job at a place like Google. I say that because their International headquarters are based in Dublin and they have quite a few project management/account management positions that require native speakers of different languages. You would have an advantage being a native Danish speaker.
I would definitely look into the multinational companies since those tend to be the larger employers. My employer, Unum, is an insurance company based in Carlow just outside of Dublin. Carlow is our tech center (currently expanding into other depts.) so it may be worthwhile looking at positions there - there are currently 3 tech positions posted, but more will open up at the start of the new year. Again, they won't consider your husband as an applicant unless he has the right to work in Ireland already in place.
Hope this helps.
Rikke,
From personal experience, and from hearing from other members on the site, you might find employers/recruiters reluctant to give you a chance until you are actually in Ireland.
The idea of interviewing from abroad has not fully caught on in Ireland yet, and if you go there telling them you plan to move over in X amount of months, there less likely to show interest.
This isn't meant to deter you. I'm sure there are employers willing to listen/interview when the right candidate comes along. But I'm speaking from first hand experience as well as sharing what I've heard from others.
Kate
There is some truth to the 3 month rule. I don't know the exact details of it, so I will find the official info and post it here.
My guess is that when the EU opened up all borders, this was put in place to protect 'richer' countries from the burden of mass immigration of people looking to benefit from a better social system. The idea is that people either work, or go back to their home country.
The following is a quote from Citizensinformation.ie
If you are a national of the European Union (EU), of one of the other EEA member states (Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway) or of Switzerland, you have the right to stay in Ireland, and your family members have the right to stay here also. There are some limits to this right, however.
You can stay in Ireland for up to 3 months without restriction. If you plan to stay more than 3 months, you must either:
Be engaged in economic activity (employed or self employed) or
Have sufficient resources and sickness insurance to ensure that you do not become a burden on the social services of Ireland or
Be enrolled as a student or vocational trainee or
Be a family member of a Union citizen in one of the previous categories.
When you come to Ireland you do not need to register with the local immigration officer and you do not need a residence card to live here. If you wish to have a record of your residence in Ireland you can register with your embassy of your country in Ireland.
UK citizens: People who are citizens of the United Kingdom (UK) are entitled to live in Ireland without any conditions or restrictions.
AH got it! I probably just didn't pay attention since we would already have the jobs in place, so the 3 month window didn't really apply.
Thank you all for all this great feedback! It is tricky for us because my husband is probably the most "employable" of us but also the one who doesn't have a right to work until we get there. I will look into options for me with some of the big multinationals and then I can always switch back into a health care setting later.
Rikke, can your husband get citizenship through you? Or would he need to fulfill residency in Denmark in order to do so?
No, unfortunately, he cannot get citizenship in Denmark without us living there for several years. They have gotten VERY restrictive in the last 10+ years and I think there was always a residency requirement.