My girlfriend is English and I'm American. We met while traveling, so for the first several years we were together neither of us had a visa to reside in the other's country.
For a while we'd fly back and forth between the US and England every few months, and we did a bunch of traveling to allow the return restrictions to expire.
Finally we got fed up and simply moved to Spain, where neither one of us is allowed to live, but they just don't check very hard. Lived there for a little over a year, coming and going as we pleased with never an issue with immigrations.
Indeed. That's actually how we managed to rent an apartment, since she was legally allowed to live there.
I, however, was the stereotypical undocumented alien, living in the country illegally, not learning the language or integrating with the culture, stealing jobs from the local economy, sneaking across the border into the land of opportunity.
Not quite. As you were her bf, you have the same right as her. This is perhaps one of the benefits of being in the EU that in some cases you have more rights living in another country, that is spain, than in the UK, for a Uk citizen, especially in situations where a relationship with a person outside of the EU is involved.
Conversely, you can probably become a citizen of an EU country that doesn't have stringent requirements and go live in England (I'm not sure if the requirements are set by the EU itself, though).
Getting married seems like a better hack. All you do is sign a little piece of paper and instantly attain a host of benefits (such as a guaranteed visa).
Ignoring emotional issues, a proper pre-nup would basically let you treat a marriage as a simple way around those restrictions without large long-term ramifications if you decide to change course.
For a while we'd fly back and forth between the US and England every few months, and we did a bunch of traveling to allow the return restrictions to expire.
Finally we got fed up and simply moved to Spain, where neither one of us is allowed to live, but they just don't check very hard. Lived there for a little over a year, coming and going as we pleased with never an issue with immigrations.