Immigration
So you've read a couple of newspapers and have had a few conversations in a pub...

Hello, kids. I’m an immigrant. I would like to tell the tale of My Immigration.

I arrived in this country on a tourist visa from the United States. This allowed me three months to look at pretty things. Pretty things included a boy who was very nice indeed and, at the end of that three months, I decided to stay.

Well, kids, I wasn’t highly skilled enough (what with advanced degrees, publications, 6 years of experience and expertise in an area of ‘need’ as outlined by the Home Office points-based system for economic migration – see www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/pointscalculator to see if you’re qualified enough to immigrate to your own country!) in the eyes of the angry eyes of the British Government, so my only recourse was to become a student. I received a one year student visa without recourse to public funds or work at a cost of £295. Well, a one year visa isn’t enough to do a degree and to get a boy to make an honest woman of you, so after a year of living in absolute squalor because of that whole not working thing, I re-applied for a two-year student visa so I could finish my course. Lo, that visa was denied because my main bank account did not reside in the United Kingdom. In order to avoid deportation, I slogged my way to Croydon to make an in-person application at the rate of £500. This time, I had recourse to work a maximum of 20 hours per week, all the while paying international fees towards the university.

My course finished and The Boy and I declared undying love to one another. This required me to receive a visa befitting of a fiancée. To do this, I was not allowed to do so within the United Kingdom, as I did not qualify under ‘exceptional circumstances’. To avoid paying the fee to become a registered fiancée with the British Government, the boy and I got married in Las Vegas, which, I might add, as I was no longer a resident of the United States and not allowed under law to get married in the United Kingdom, was the only place I could do so. With plane fares and hotel fees reaching £3000 to merely tie the knot in un-exceptional circumstances, the extra fee of £1030 for the required in-person application for limited two year entry clearance into the United Kingdom was most unwelcome.

I was allowed to work full-time, which was most welcome, but had no recourse to public funds (dole, job-seekers, housing benefits, child benefits, disability). After two years, I was allowed to apply for Indefinite Leave to Remain, which costs £585. This is where I now stand. I still don’t have access to the aforementioned public funds, which would be a right pain in the arse if I broke my back, had a baby or lost my job.

The total cost of visas has been £2705. This, just so I could get married and stay married. This doesn’t include, of course incidental costs which reach into the thousands.

And you say immigration is easy? And you wonder why people try to screw the system to live here illegally? I am a nice middle-class girl with lots of education and a pretty white skin, yet I faced an uphill immigration battle from the moment I arrived.

And this started pre-911 and before Labour’s many immigration reforms, which have made the process even more difficult.

After the difficulty and cost of immigration, I now volunteer with asylum seeker (also, there is no such thing as an ‘illegal’ asylum seeker, as it is a legal status according to the UK Home Office) and refugee organisations. These are the people who are truly in need of our help.

I won’t even get started on the current absurd hurdles and impossibilities of achieving this status; or how the government imprisons children and babies in detention centres; or how I’ve seen families decide to not eat for a week so they can afford the train fare to Cardiff for their hearings; or how you can be denied asylum status because when you knock on that immigration door with an entire family’s worth of death and torture but without a clue of what to do, you don’t claim it within 24 hours; or how the British public hate for lack of integration, yet lash out when they do try to integrate; or how a family can still be legally destitute even after achieving refugee status; or how they are offered the worst available housing as default; or how on a daily basis they are screwed over by unscrupulous people in shops; or the constant fear and desperation they experience even a decade after arriving; or how pretty much everything that has been said in posts here, in the Daily Mail and up and down the land is almost complete bullshit, despite bullshit bleatings about anecdotal evidence.

Yeah, anybody can say I know a pig farmer, but unless you’ve actually worked on a pig farm, you haven’t the bloody slightest clue about what being a pig farmer is all about.
(TheSnark oh, c'mon, like you didn't see me coming, Wed 7 Apr 2010, 18:47, 23 replies)

amen
someone speaking from experience rather than opinionated ignorant nonsense.
Hope it all works out for you.
(jennymnemonic, Wed 7 Apr 2010, 18:53, closed)

There's a Swedish phrase I love...
...it roughly translates to 'opinion is like the arse, divided'.

Only in this case, I'm right and everybody else is an arse.
(TheSnark oh, c'mon, like you didn't see me coming, Wed 7 Apr 2010, 21:35, closed)

Tier 1
Total (75 points required) 80

Looks like I'm allowed to stay. Shame it was so tough on you, but to be honest I'm ok with giving US citizens a hard time given the hassle we have to put up with going over there even to visit.

We look after those who are good to us, like the other EU countries.
( Ungersven would support SpankyHanky's patreon, Wed 7 Apr 2010, 19:01, closed)

It isn't just the US
Any non-EU, non-former Commonwealth (select) are subject to the same shitting shittery.
(TheSnark oh, c'mon, like you didn't see me coming, Wed 7 Apr 2010, 21:33, closed)

Good.
It weeds out those that aren't determined to be here, and the poor.

Fuck the poor, if they're trying to get into the UK. They're someone else's problem and I don't want my tax paying for them (however, that doesn't mean we shouldn't send aid).

I'd extend the strict controls on EU citizens too. Especially the French (they'd just give up trying...)
( disasterprone "Pyjamas caused the Holocaust", Thu 8 Apr 2010, 8:38, closed)

Why the fuck did you do it then?
If I tried to get into the US I think I'd have the same problem -- difference is I don't want to go to another country as shit as this one.
Do yourself a favour and learn some languages and give yourselves some choices.
If you are able to learn languages and skills then leave the US and UK and go somewhere you like better.
(Me, I'm not... in any way intoxicated, Wed 7 Apr 2010, 19:06, closed)

Ah, yes.
We're waiting until I have my passport. After that, we can move anywhere.

Until then: Oxford. It is like another planet, at least.
(TheSnark oh, c'mon, like you didn't see me coming, Wed 7 Apr 2010, 21:31, closed)

Then why go through the bother for the UK?
If you're planning to go to another country afterwards?

But yay for Oxford :)
( Amberl was stripey and dominated Europe, Wed 7 Apr 2010, 21:36, closed)

Passport!
It is like a key, only it opens, like, Italy or sommat.
(TheSnark oh, c'mon, like you didn't see me coming, Wed 7 Apr 2010, 21:39, closed)

You're not an immigrant.
'Immigrant' means 'dark-skinned immigrant from the Third World.'
(apeloverage committed the vile act of onanism on, Wed 7 Apr 2010, 19:16, closed)

I'm ginger, though.
I think the QOTW of past has revealed I am genetically inferior.
(TheSnark oh, c'mon, like you didn't see me coming, Wed 7 Apr 2010, 21:36, closed)

Ignore the tossers
who leave angry, nasty comments. I emigrated to NZ to get away from the Daily Mail crowd. Trouble is they are everywhere.

Good luck for the future, keep up the good work.
(micmac is happy as a pig in shite, Wed 7 Apr 2010, 19:53, closed)

Meh
At least the don't march in white sheets like in my hometown.
(TheSnark oh, c'mon, like you didn't see me coming, Wed 7 Apr 2010, 21:40, closed)

Good luck
the missus is going through immigration hell atm

I know how annoying it can be
( emvee cruor deo cruoris, Wed 7 Apr 2010, 20:53, closed)

Portfolio
The best thing I can suggest is to put together a vast, stunning, indexed portfolio of your life together. Nothing is too trivial.
(TheSnark oh, c'mon, like you didn't see me coming, Wed 7 Apr 2010, 21:30, closed)

Emigrating to the USA
To be fair, it's just as expensive, if not more so, to become legal in the USA. It requires thousands of pounds, insane amounts of paperwork, lots of patience and a real willingness to put up with all of the above. I'm a British citizen who has married an American and moved to the USA. It's not an easy process, but it's what I wanted to do, so I grit me teeth and did it. I suppose you just have to be aware of what you are getting into at the start, then perhaps you can bear it a bit better.
(Woofie, Wed 7 Apr 2010, 22:03, closed)

Paperwork:
Ah, what we do for love.

Is it working out for you?
(TheSnark oh, c'mon, like you didn't see me coming, Wed 7 Apr 2010, 22:04, closed)

Your story
is kinda like mine but in reverse.
Although it has all ended and I am now going through a divorce to my American husband, we went through the same process. Met, fell in love, looked at him moving here for work. Nigh on impossible. Fiance Visa...can't work so no good. So we got married in Vegas, drove to LA for an interview at the consulate. Took our entire history with us. 6 big files of info, emails, letters, every single bit of personal info we could find about us and my situation.
He was granted his visa after enormous stress and expense. Then he moved over, found work but yes with no recourse to public funds.
Then we had to apply for his proper visa. Again every bit of info had to be present and correct. It was so stressful. He also had to do his 'living in the UK' test.
We bought all the books and prep tests. There were so many questions on there that I didn't even now the answer to.
He met lots of people in the waiting room who were struggling with passing and very upset and uptight about how they were going to do.
He passed and it was ok, but like you, it cost thousands in real terms. The emotional cost is impossible to explain.
I hope things work out for you, I really do.

And if I can just add...I know things didn't work out for me but the whole process really opened my eyes to an immigration process I was clueless about, and the whole experience was an adventure I enjoyed and will never forget.
( Herb Alpert's Taxi Driver I have very beautiful lips, Thu 8 Apr 2010, 0:09, closed)

Clickin this hard.
The British attitude to immigration is a national disgrace.
( Zuowan, Thu 8 Apr 2010, 3:05, closed)

Top story, Snark
and, yes, many of the neanderthals do need to know this.

The problem, as I see it, currently is that most people's problems with 'immigrants' relates to those eastern europeans who are quite legally excersicing their right to free passage and working throughout the EU, rather than those from the rest of the world.

Also, I read recently there are more French people in London than Poles, but the daily Mail doesn't have a problem with that for some reason.
( Joe Scaramanga with a G-double-O-D vibration, Thu 8 Apr 2010, 8:57, closed)

Like this bellend:
www.b3ta.com/questions/prejudice/post682739#answers-post-686017
(TheSnark oh, c'mon, like you didn't see me coming, Thu 8 Apr 2010, 10:52, closed)

To you I award my only click of the week.
I never even knew how hard it was to gain entry officially.

I can see that the official channel is so frigging hard to bear that word gets out about it contributing to more people smuggling and illegal immigration.

I'm not getting any deeper into this.

Eject Eject [><]
(AndyC4m Eject Eject [><], Thu 8 Apr 2010, 10:47, closed)

Then eff off back to your own country
its simple - you want to move here- you follow the rules like everyone else. If you don't like it then don't bother and stop whining.

I imagine if I wanted to move to Aus (like my friend has, Canada or even the US, I would face similar if not harder obsticles.
(audreyforbes audreyforbes, Thu 8 Apr 2010, 12:43, closed)