For Munim and Janika · 30 August 2026

The one question

Nine separate artificial-intelligence researchers were sent at this, each reading the actual laws, treaties and government tools, none of them told what answer to reach. Four found errors in their own first conclusions. No lawyer has seen any of it and none of it should be filed on. It exists so the two of you can have one conversation, and then buy an hour of real legal time knowing exactly what to ask.

Rewritten from scratch around your questions. About fifteen minutes.

The question everything else is waiting on

Are you willing to live together outside America for the year or two the American process takes, or do you need to be together in America?

You asked which single question, once answered, unblocks the most. It is that one. It costs nothing, it takes one conversation, only the two of you can answer it, and every expensive decision on this page is downstream of it.

Answer yes and the three deadlines driving this whole exercise, the 15th of September, the 18th of September and August 2028, all stop mattering at once. Answer no and you are choosing a route whose best realistic case has Janika able to work in America around May 2027, and whose likely case is late 2027 or early 2028.

Where I come out, having read all nine

Yes. Marry in December, live in Britain, and take the green card through London anyway

I held this back until everything was in, and it is my view rather than counsel's. It is not a compromise between America and Britain and it is not a retreat. On the evidence it is strictly better than the America-first plan on the objective you actually stated, and it gives up nothing.

You are together and both working within weeks instead of within years. The American case proceeds the whole time, from London, through the only route that can ever work for Janika. The bad branch, a refusal, costs you almost nothing because you are already living together. And on a footnote nobody expected, living in Britain switches on an American route that living in Switzerland or Australia would switch off.

Why the timelines are what they are

You said they made no sense. They did not, because two things were being described wrongly.

First: it is two filings, not one, and only the second is slow

The petition asks whether you qualify. It concerns you alone. Fast-tracked it is decided in about 1.2 months, and it puts no restriction on travel whatever.
The application turns that into permanent residence. Median 5.8 months. This is the one carrying the work permit, the travel document, the medical and the interview.

Almost everything confusing follows from people describing the two as one thing.

Second: every number you were quoted is not what you were told it is

The waiting times the government publishes are not medians. Verbatim: "the amount of time it took us to complete 80% of adjudicated cases." That is the edge of the ordinary, not the typical case. One in five takes longer, and how much longer is not published.

The real medians, year to 30 June 2026: petition on fast-track 1.2 months; the green card application 5.8 months; a work permit behind it 5.1 months; a travel document 6.0 months. Plan on the median, budget for the published figure.

So when could Janika actually be here?

Case	What happens	Here and working
Just visiting	She can come tomorrow, ninety days at a time, and is already coming in October. Being together is not gated by any of this.	Now
Best	Petition filed September, approved first time in November, married December, consulate moves briskly	~May 2027
Likely	One request for more evidence on the petition, ordinary consular scheduling	Nov 2027 to Feb 2028
Refused	Denial around mid-2027, start again on another route	Late 2028, 2029, or never this way

What separates May 2027 from 2029 is not a queue. There is no queue: for British applicants the relevant categories are open right now. It is one official's view of one document.

The latest you can apply, and the target you were aiming at was wrong

This should take the pressure off

You do not need the green card in hand by 2028. You need the application filed and pending

A properly filed application keeps you in lawful stay and carries its own work permit, independent of your student status. So the requirement is to file while in status, not to finish. That one correction removes most of the urgency you have been feeling.

What you want	Last safe filing date	What breaks it first
Green card in hand before your permit ends, 15 Jun 2028	~Dec 2026 comfortably Apr 2027 at a push	A request for more evidence on the petition. It alone adds three to six months.
Green card in hand before 14 Aug 2028	~Feb 2027 comfortably Jun 2027 at a push	The same.
Merely filed and pending, work permit issued	~Jan 2028 legally to 14 Aug 2028	The work permit, five months, and it cannot be fast-tracked.

None of the three is unreachable. Nothing has expired and nothing is about to. The 18 September date is a deadline about the quality of the outcome, not about whether it is possible at all.

The five countries, on the three things that matter

Country	Can you both live and work there?	Tax now / if profitable	Having a child
Britain	Both, today, nothing to file. You are a citizen; her settled status is permanent and survives five years away.	$8,050 47.5%	Free maternity care from day one, no ceiling, intensive care included. Neither of you is the isolated one.
Finland	Her yes. You no, unless you marry. The living-together route needs two years of it, which you have never had.	$13,750 51.3%	Best of the five. Childcare capped near EUR 335 a month, 320 days of leave at about 70% of her salary, best newborn survival. The first three years may be cash-positive.
United States	You yes. Her not in any way that permits work, for roughly thirteen months.	$3,950 30.7%	Worst of the five, by a distance. A birth costs your whole $7,300 deductible, or twice that across a new year. No paid leave, and Eulia is too small even for unpaid leave.
Australia	You yes on your residence. Her no: a partner visa is AUD 11,710 and a median seventeen months.	$10,100 37 to 43%	A two-year trap: time outside Australia does not count, so neither of you could claim parental pay for a baby born within two years of arriving. About AUD 26,122 that is simply not there.
Switzerland	Her effectively yes. You no since 2021, unless you marry.	$19,450 37.0%	Safe and expensive. A yearly tax on what you own, Eulia shares included, payable in cash whether or not the company pays you anything.

Tax figures are the annual cost with no profit, then the total rate on a modelled $400,000 of profit with $100,000 salaries. Exchange rates assumed. Illustrative, not advice.

Three things about tax that change how to read that table

The one that reframes it

Moving never replaces the American tax bill. It adds a second one

A Delaware company is an American taxpayer permanently, because of where it is registered. The 21 per cent is a floor nothing on that list gets under. Moving to Switzerland does not buy a low rate; it buys 21 per cent plus a second tax system, a second set of accounts and a second audit surface. And in your actual situation, which is no profit, moving would cost four to fifteen thousand a year to produce exactly the same amount of tax as now: none.

Live today, and nothing to do with moving

Finland may already treat Eulia as a Finnish company

Since 2021 Finland claims a foreign company if its board decides things from Finland. Janika has been a director in Espoo since May. Your treaty with Finland is the harshest of the four: if it bites, the company gets no treaty protection at all. Two tax researchers found this independently. The fix is about where decisions are made, and Finland gives binding answers in advance. Related: you are already split, Ohio and Espoo, and split control is worse than either country alone.

The accident you could have without noticing

Australia is the most expensive mistake available

If Eulia were managed from Australia it would become a treaty resident of nowhere: no tie-breaker, no dispute route, up to 46 per cent combined. The mirror image is a clean line you control: keep the decision-making out of Australia and the treaty works perfectly. You already hold residence there, so there is no visa moment to mark the transition.

The thing that decided it for me

Ask who is stranded

In America the isolated one is Janika. In Finland it is Munim. In Britain it is neither

Every route into America fast enough to matter puts her here legally forbidden from doing any paid work at all, for about thirteen months, with no social security number, not driving, and with no family but your brother. That is also, on your stated plan, the year you would be having a child.

In Finland the stranded one would be you, waiting on a permit. That is a far more survivable version of the same problem, because she is the one recovering from childbirth. In Britain nobody is stranded. Of everything in these nine reports, this is the fact I would not trade away.

What a baby actually costs in America, on your own policy

Situation	You pay
Normal birth	$7,300
Caesarean	$7,300
A $117,878 intensive-care stay for the baby	$7,300
A pregnancy crossing 1 January, so two deductibles	$9,000 to $10,000
If the family deductible is the combined kind	~$14,600

Against a stated salary of $12,000, plus about $10,700 a year of adult premiums. Deaths in childbirth per 100,000: United States 17, Britain and Finland 8, Switzerland 5, Australia 2.

And no, there is no subsidy to go and claim. One researcher suggested there was, and it was wrong. On a $12,000 income you would normally get large help with those premiums, but no help of that kind is available to you at any income until you have a green card. Paying the full $447.25 is the correct outcome, and it was a deliberate choice made on tax advice before you signed up, not an oversight. The official notice records that no income was ever declared and no help was ever applied for. Whether anything else is open to you, such as help with the costs you pay when you actually use the plan, is a separate question being checked now.

Britain does not cost you America. It is step one of it

Janika can never get a green card from inside America. Anyone whose last entry was on the visa waiver is barred, and the only exception is marriage to an American citizen, which you can never be for her. So the consulate is not a fallback, it is the only route that works for her, and it lands her as a permanent resident able to work on day one.
The way back is built, not chosen. A real British operation, twelve months of genuine executive work inside it, then an internal transfer. Moving there starts that clock rather than stopping it.
The footnote nobody expected. The American treaty with Britain applies only to people actually resident and domiciled there. Living in Britain switches your treaty-investor route on. Living in Switzerland or Australia would switch it off.
The petition can be filed now and costs you nothing. It restricts no travel and commits you to nothing.

What to do, in order

Have the conversation at the top of this page. Nothing else should be decided first.
Stay in America until 16 September. Free, and it preserves the good version of your status. Departing after it converts you to a fixed end date and halves your grace period.
Fix the pay rate before the 15th. $12,000 against 40 certified hours is $5.77 an hour, and it is now the weak point in three separate places: your status, your risk at the border, and any petition.
Ask Janika who employed her in Britain from 2020. If it was a Skanska company, a transfer to America opens roughly now rather than next May, she arrives able to work, and it would give you the right to work too.
Marry in December. Britain needs seven days' residence each and twenty nine days' notice, and because she is settled you skip the referral regime entirely. Finland is slowest at five to seven weeks.
File the petition. Cheap, fast, restricts nothing, and every route runs through it.
Buy one hour of a real immigration lawyer. Two questions only: whether that British residence footnote is enforced, and what date you are actually admitted until if you re-enter after 15 September.
Put a short Australian trip in the diary before 3 March 2028. Outside the country that day and the whole residence ends, not merely the travel rights.

Where this could be wrong

No independent reviewer has read this version, which is itself the first caveat. These are the honest weak points, including two where the researchers disagreed with each other.

They disagreed about travel after 15 September. Two said an approved card re-admits you to its own end date; a third said the published wording points at a date already in your past and called it unresolved. Your own file from 15 August lands nearest the first, and adds that re-entry costs you the open-ended version permanently. Treat it as a question for the lawyer, not as settled.
They disagreed about Janika's own visa, one saying roughly one in ten and another one in four. Both reasoned from a file recording no competitions, prizes, publications or jury seats. Architecture is full of all four. If that file is simply incomplete, the answer changes.
Your unemployment count is contradicted inside your own files, one entry saying none accrued and another putting you at 59 to 61 days with a breach around mid-November. Only your school can settle it, and it has become load-bearing.
Every money figure is modelled, not measured. Exchange rates are assumed, some 2026 tax bands are estimated, and the profitable case invents a profit that does not exist.
Nobody knows what you have. Your savings were never supplied, and they decide whether the treaty-investor route is real or decoration, and what a Swiss wealth tax would cost.
The rules behind the September dates are six weeks old and have no track record. One researcher could not check whether they are being challenged in court.
I am not neutral about Britain. Five reports pointed that way and they may share a blind spot: all of them weighted "can both work immediately" very heavily, because that is the constraint you set. If that constraint softened, the answer could change.

What the words mean

Settled status: Janika's permanent right to live and work in Britain, from the scheme for Europeans who were there before Brexit. Lost only after five straight years away.
The petition and the application: Two separate filings. The first proves you qualify. The second turns that into a green card.
Fast-track: An extra government fee forcing a quick decision. Available on the petition, not on the application, the work permit or the travel document.
Treaty investor: A visa for someone from a treaty country who invests substantially in an American business.
Your training plan: The document Eulia signed telling the government your job is forty hours a week. It is where the pay-rate problem comes from.

References

Official processing times and the median tables behind them.
Visa Bulletin, September 2026, showing no queue for British applicants.
Federal Register, the two July 2026 rules behind the September dates.
Immigration regulations and the Policy Manual.
Treaty countries list, including the British residence footnote.
Migration Act 1958 section 82, the Australian March 2028 provision.
Kela for Finnish leave and childcare, and gov.uk for the British equivalents.
Finnish Tax Administration on when a foreign company becomes Finnish.
Australian Taxation Office ruling TR 2018/5 on where a company is managed.
US tax treaties with Britain, Finland, Switzerland and Australia.