Need Advice

I will jump right into this. I'm an American citizen and I live in the US. My boyfriend is Irish and currently lives in Ireland. We are not living together now nor have we ever in the 3 years that we have been dating. We have known each other now for 6 years. We have been back and forth between the two countries to see each other whenever possible.

Within the last year we have been discussing living together. We both would really like to live in Ireland. Since most of his family is there and I do not have much family here, it makes a lot of sense. We have looked over the entire process online, and I understand that it is all lengthy and seems like it will take time. I am fine with that. But because we do not live together now, it seems as if that is the problem.

Originally we were considering going down the defacto visa route, however, that is not an option for us as you need to be living with your partner for 2 years. So, I cannot apply for the defacto visa. We have never lived together. We have even discussed getting married, but one of the stipulations that I was reading online is that you need to show proof of you living together (according to this here)(https://www.irishimmigration.ie/my-situ ... al-scheme/).
Again, how can we do this if we cannot even initiate living together to begin with. We would definitely get married in a heartbeat if we could, but I also know that they may think that is disingenuous. How can you prove that it is genuine?

This is our problem. We cannot even begin to live together in the first place. I have contacted and called my local Irish consulate here in the United states, but they do not answer calls and they are very generic and link me the exact same page that I have already been researching. I have emailed them as well, and got back an automatic response referring me to the site that I have already seen. I am not really sure what to do or think here. I do not know anyone who is American that has married an Irish Citizen. But in our situation since we are not living together now, my question is, is it even possible at this point for us to live together? Now I understand that I could go down the work visa route, but my job title now does not translate over in Ireland exactly and we are really worried at this point if we can ever get the chance to even live with one another.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, as both of us are incredibly worried at this point. We will continue to try everything possible in order to get this process rolling. Any help is really appreciated.

schell wrote: ↑

Sat Sep 28, 2024 9:58 pm

We have even discussed getting married, but one of the stipulations that I was reading online is that you need to show proof of you living together (according to this here)

First of all, you can live with each other for a bit even, on the strength of your current visitor visas. What is stopping you from doing that? Assuming you adhere to conditions of the visas, of course.
Also, I'm not sure where did you get the information that you need to show proff that you have lived together? I wouldn't say that it is the case for marraige. Yes, you might be scrutinized, but I don't think it's an outright refusal.