petitefrancaise

I have already mentioned in the Harvey thread about how much support I have seen for the French community via their Consulate in Houston. There has been nothing from the British Consulate.
The French Consulate used FB to share alerts and important information. They have organised volunteers and asked for a list of people with space in their homes to house evacuees.

Nothing on FB from the British consulate.

I wondered if I was just not in the loop but it appears I'm not the only person particularly fed up with the lack of Brit support.

From a post made this morning:

"Hello is any one there? Oh I've just seen you are open at 9am on Monday! I don't know if you're aware but the rest of Houston is suffering record levels of flooding due to Hurricane Harvey. I'm sure I'm not the only Brit that could have done with some help from our embassy these last few days. I got evacuated to the GRB Center (just along the road from you) on Tuesday. Other embassies had set up desks there to help their citizens. Your absence was disappointing as I always thought Brits looked after each other. I don't have much left, some clothes I got from the GRB. I've had to borrow this phone as I lost mine when the rescue boat I was in sank. It's going to be another two weeks till I can get to my car. I've now moved to a hotel in the Energy Corridor thanks to FEMA. Two things I held on to were my social security number so that I could register with FEMA and my water damaged passport. I know which one I value the most at this time!"

Pulaski

If you have left the UK and "gone native" locally, I am not sure why anyone would be looking for the British government to help them, at least not absent a civil war or invasion of the country where they are living.

I can see it might also be a bit different if you didn't speak the local language and so were unable to fully understand the local government advice.

petitefrancaise

I'm not sure what you mean by "gone native" or why that means the British consulate would not help out it's citizens in a disaster like this.

Maybe this is the prevailing British attitude - if you're not in Britain then tough luck,eh? YOu chose to live there so you're on your own mate???

Not quite sure why we are all paying for a British consulate abroad if they're not there to help out in precisely these situations.
Obviously other countries feel differently. I've also experienced first hand how the US consulate abroad helps its citizens and the situation wasn't anything as bad as this.

Maybe Ms Bell was too busy making sure the execs at BP were ok?

Pulaski

Bought a house, local job, local spouse, almost (or actually) zero likilihood of returning to the UK. Perhaps the US, and perhaps other countries, assume that most of their citizens overseas will return home eventually.

I can't imagine any circumstances under which I would expect the British government to come and "rescue" me from a natural disaster in the US, and I certainly wouldn't be monitoring Tweets or emails from the British consulate for updates on local events or circumstances. I might take a different view if I was in the Congo, Bolivia, or Uzbekistan.
"We" are? I am? How?

petitefrancaise

Vienna Convention on Consular Assistance:
article 5
(e) helping and assisting nationals, both individuals and bodies corporate, of the sending State;

it comes with the British passport.

Pulaski

Correct.

Should I call the British Consulate about a neighbour's barking dog? And if not, where do I draw the dividing line?

What help did you want? What advice or assistance could the British government have provided that wasn't already provided better locally?

Nutek

Seems fair.

Didn't know I was, but if so I would prefer they stop doing that and give me my money back.

dc koop

How many UK citizens who come here as permanent residents bother to register with a local British consulate ? It never occurred to me to do so. On the other hand if I moved to North Korea or Iran I would definitely do so

Pollyana

The British Consulate isn't supposed to offer help to Brits who are also US citizens - same in any country, if you are a citizen of that country and caught up in a disaster then the British Embassy/Consulate is not bound to help you.
And help in disasters usually means evacuating to the home country. So its conceivably possible that a Brit who is not a US citizen might be able to get repatriated, though I doubt it.
When my department are evacuating Australians we evacuate them because the country is unsafe. Awful though the Texan situation is, we are not evacuating Aussies, and I can't imagine the British Consulate evacuating Brits.

Not really sure what other help is required. If passports have been destroyed then they will help with emergency travel documents and all that kind of thing, but its up to the individual to request that kind of help.

BritInParis

petitefrancaise

You could take a look at the french consulate FB page to see what they've been doing....

French families that had to be evacuated were re-housed with other french families because we all signed up to let the consulate know where we were, how much space we had and how many people and pets we could take. I think even just having some support and encouragement like this is worth huge amounts.

As the guy on the British Consulate page wrote, other country's consulates were there giving help to their citizens, why not the British ?

Many of us don't hold other passports.

Pulaski

You are making the assumption that I might think that what the French are doing is a good idea.

I can't help but wonder percentage of British citizens living in the Houston area have registered with the British consulate? I would happily bet that it is somewhere between tiny and negligible. I have certainly never been registered with the British consulate, and as I said earlier in a major industrialized English-speaking country I am not sure what I would ever expect or need from the British government.

If I was living in some non-English speaking, uncivilized backwater, such as the Congo, Bolivia, Uzbekistan, or France, then I would certainly have registered with the British consulate, and might look to them if I needed my a§§ hauling out of the fire.

moneypenny20

Why would you need to sign up with your birth nation's consulate? Most people would sign up with their local council and not give a thought to their birth nation. Unless the didn't know English and needed that support.

petitefrancaise

They just asked for volunteers and organised it all. Like the other consulates I guess. It's difficult for me to put my finger on it - I expected that the British consulate would help and I was surprised to say the least that there doesn't seem to have been much at all. Maybe I'm more french than I realised.

ETA. don't forget that I posted this thread because someone in Houston obviously felt that some help from the British government was in order. Feedback from my Brit friends in France is that the British government doesn't give a fig about any Brits living outside the UK.

Pulaski

Are you registered with the British consulate?

Sorry but I find this thread kinda sad. The British built the greatest empire the world has ever, and likely will ever see, and it didn't do so with an attitude that we need the government to haul our collective a§§es out of the drink every time some challenge was put in out way.

More recently than the era of empire building, WWII caused immense difficulties and hardship to the UK and the British people and the response of the British was mostly people looking to provide help, not receive it. As President Kennedy said "Ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country."