Sophie began dating Theo when he was studying abroad in UCD. After they finished their studies, tight visa regulations in their home countries, Ireland and the United States, forced them into a long distance relationship. Now, they are emigrating to Canada to be together.
In August 2024, the CSO released statistics that showed that emigration from Ireland was at its highest rate since 2015. 34,700 Irish citizens left the country in the year leading up to April 2024, along with 10,600 other EU citizens, 3,000 UK citizens, and 21,500 other citizens. 15% of these emigrants were aged 15-24.
There are many reasons people are choosing to emigrate: some are returning home, some seeking better employment opportunities, cheaper living costs, or even better weather. There is another reason, perhaps less frequently discussed: reuniting with a long distance partner.
Speaking of her own experience (using pseudonyms), Sophie tells me about her plans to emigrate to Canada in August in a bid to live with her long-distance boyfriend of almost four years, Theo. They weren’t always long distance, they met in college in UCD and began dating. When Theo, an American citizen, dropped out of college and was forced to move back to the United States, they made it work. Sophie ended up doing her study abroad year in Colorado, with Theo joining her there, and the two moving in together for a year. It was when that year ended that things became difficult. Sophie still had a year of college to finish in UCD, and ideally Theo would have moved back to Ireland. However, without being able to rely on the ease of a student visa, it proved impossible.
To come to stay in Ireland long-term, you have four visa options. Work, Study, ‘Live’, or Join Family. Through the ‘live’ visa route, you can retire, or you can invest a minimum of €1 million over three years. Understandably, neither of these were an option for Theo, nor was the study route.
To take the ‘join family’ route, he and Sophie would have to attest to being ‘de facto partners’: a cohabiting relationship akin to marriage duly attested. Realistically what this meant is they had to be able to prove they had lived together for at least 2 years; they had lived together for just under that time.
The only option that remained was a work visa, yet this proved just as difficult. Theo would have been seeking an ‘Employment Permit’, which would have allowed him to work and live in Ireland on his own accord. However, the Department of Enterprise, Trade, and Employment has an ‘Ineligible List of Occupations for employment permits’, and included on them is virtually every job Theo could have tangibly got in Ireland; from bar staff, wait staff, and shelf fillers, to van drivers, customer service managers, retail assistants, TV, video and audio engineers, receptionists, secretaries, and all work in the private home, most jobs of this type are deemed ineligible. Not to say that these are the jobs that Theo is particularly seeking, he currently works in a theatre in the U.S., but those jobs often require relying on your existing networks to break into, which Theo did not yet have in Ireland.
So, Sophie and Theo have been maintaining a long-distance relationship for almost two years now, taking it in turns to visit each other for the maximum 3 months that a holiday visa will allow. On a holiday visa, neither Sophie nor Theo are allowed to work whilst in the others country, making financing their time together difficult, and creating a semblance of the life they hope to have together even more so.
I think all the hassle of long distance and being in a relationship with someone from another continent, as stressful and hard and difficult as it all is, it is so worth it to be with this person.
Sophie says in some ways, the long periods of time apart has “stunted” their relationship; “We've been together for four years but over half of that has not been actually in person”.
She adds “on the other hand sometimes I feel we have a deeper connection now, partly just because we've always had to be so committed to each other and explicitly making efforts to see each other, spending huge amounts of money to see each other, quitting our jobs, disrupting our lives just to spend time together, so it's made it very obvious that we want to be with each other and even things like we've had to use words a lot more to say how much we care about each other and miss each other.”
However, the situation is far from ideal for Sophie and Theo. After putting her all into finding a job in her field in Ireland, Sophie describes feeling “stuck”, yearning to “get to the next thing, whatever the thing may be”. That is when Canada became a real talking point, its working visas more accessible and finally providing an opportunity for Sophie and Theo to reunite for more than 3 months at a time, outside of both of their home countries.
In August, Sophie will join the 34,700 Irish citizens who emigrated last year, to find new job opportunities, and to overcome tight visa rules, making her long-distance relationship short-distance once again.
She says, “I think all the hassle of long distance and being in a relationship with someone from another continent, as stressful and hard and difficult as it all is, it is so worth it to be with this person. Whenever I get really down about everything that's happening, I think about how grateful I am to have met him, to know him, to be with him and I realise all this effort, the money and the time and everything, it's so worth it.”