kins

My MIL married a USC in the early 60s. He died in the mid-1980s and she didn't have US citizenship, and has since lost her green card through living in the UK. So she has American children living in the US but if she wants to live with them she has to go through the whole immigration procedure again. No one anywhere seems to believe me when I explain that to them - they assume that you can automatically live in the same country as your parents or children...

Sally Redux

My Mum assumed she could come and live with me unfortunately that's not the case.






phew

chicagojlo

They're talking about the 'other kind' right! The ones that get seen first in the hospital...funny because it used to be the drunks that got seen first...

Thydney

I had a similar problem with US Airways they insisted I fill in the I94(?) I kept repeating I didn't but it wouldn't listen.

Rete

Even now, 10 years later and having achieved naturalization, people still look at my husband cockeyed when he details what processing he had to go through from the start just to enter the US legally with the intent to marry and remain which his USC wife.

But then, honestly, until I did research, I hadn't much more than a passing knowledge of the process myself.

anabella

Well, we did that first but that process is a lot more simple.. I think people in general don't know what it takes to emigrate unless they have to do it themselves or they know people close to them who go through it..

another bloody yank

I just found out that my Great Grandmother never became a citizen. I think my Mom has her on audio cassettes talking in her broken English about going through processing at Ellis Island. My Great Grandfather had been here several years working as a coal miner and sent for them when he had saved enough to secure passage for her and my great aunt who was a young girl at the time. This would have been about 1912 or so. I remember as a boy (I was 12 when she died at the age of 93) wondering why she called cars "machines". My Grandfather's car was always "The Machine" to her. She had lived with my Grandparents since 1939, after my Great Grandfather was shot and killed in the crossfire of a gunfight that occured in the Saloon where he was working at the time.


OOPS, sorry for going off topic, started waxing sentimental...

JAJ

They changed not long after that, though - after about 1922 foreign women marrying American men did have to naturalize (due to the Cable Act).

Foreign women marrying British men got automatic British nationality right up to 1949, and up until 1983 were allowed to register as British solely on the grounds of marriage.

Pennywell

Most of the Americans that I meet do not have any idea how difficult it is to become a legal PR, let alone a citizen and are honestly quite horrified that we pay tax but can't vote. Don't blame them, as someone has already said, why should they know? Until recently I would have thought the same way about the the UK. My cousins who were born in South Africa, have a Dutch father and British mother and hold British passports have had to jump through hoops to live and work legally in the UK. Most of the family say thats ridiculous look at the Polish etc, etc.
I think the assumption is made that if in the US and UK, English is your first language then the adopted country should welcome you into it's warm embrace.

chicagojlo

A lot of Brits have that warped idea of how being British somehow gives you special treatment if you want to live here, or in fact pretty much anywhere!

kins

Yes my husband's mother in British but that didn't automatically make him British - he still had to live there for a certain amount of time on an Unlimited Leave to Remain visa, then apply for citizenship.

His sister currently has no rights to live in the UK - not sure if there is a process through which she could even get a visa to live there now?

E17Avenue

There is a common confusion between the term "citizen" and the term "resident". And to be honest until I moved outside the UK I probably wouldn't have known the difference.

chicagojlo

Me either.

E17Avenue

There is also a common assumption that not only do they hand out citizenships at the entry points, not only are they are freely accepted by those arriving, but they also have incineration points for foreigners' now unnecessary native passports.

Bob

and tele shows don't help....though Eli Stone almost got it right the other day by calling the INS CIS, that was close enough