superkruz

I am sure there are even more - like Zimbabwe. So much for balls-on accuracy.

rpjs

Well I was just limiting myself to former colonies other than the US that drove us out by force of arms. There's plenty more that severed all political links with us such as the monarchy or Commonwealth at or after independencr.

H Bomb

They left when the Empire was slowly disolving as opposed to forcefully removing themselves and declaring themselves independent.

Also they all had involvement in the Commonwealth to some extent and for varying periods of time after leaving.

ian-mstm

The balls-on accuracy comment dealt with her issue surrounding entitlement. I know it's difficult, but please try to keep up with the conversation.

Ian

rpjs

But what Ian wrote was

Which is simply not accurate.

Actually there are quite a few former British dependencies that achieved independence without joining the Commonwealth. Burma is probably the most "pure" example of a British colony going straight to independent republic without going through "dominion status" as it was once called or taking up Commonwealth membership, but there were others.

H Bomb

It's simply not accurate to quote that I wrote that when it was not me!

Steve_

Yeah I was going to say, heard about the Easter Uprising?

The whole Yemen thing is really interesting because the UK had a bunch of SAS soldiers go in to help who were "on leave" and the US was helping the other side. Most of it should be declassified now, would make a good documentary because essentially the US and the UK were fighting a proxy war against each other.

rpjs

Oops apologies!

Steve_

I never really understand why in fact it is so hard to immigrate from the UK because English is the dominant language in both countries and they have this "special" relationship which in reality is more about the NSA and GCHQ being cosy.

Canada has all kinds of agreements and Australia has E-3.

Just seems odd.

S Folinsky

The "special relationship" has nothing to do with immigration. Before 1965, there was a "national quota" system which was based upon population in the 1910 census. This really favored Northern Europe -- the UK and Germany never filled their quotas. Eastern Europe was a different kettle of fish. [My mother's side had emigrate to Canada and waited seven years for their US visas to come through].

East Asians were from the "Asiatic Exclusion Zone" and could not immigrate at all. China was removed from that zone in 1943 and the zone was eliminated entirely in 1952. However, the 1952 Act left the national quotas in place, so people from East Asia were allowed quotas based upon when they were not allowed to immigrate [subject to a minimum quota of 100 per year]. In fact, that is why President Truman vetoed the damn thing and that veto was overridden by a Democratic Congress [albeit during the "Lame Duck" prior to Eisenhower's inaguration.]

In 1965, the National Quota system was abolished as of Fiscal 1968. As system of world-wide preferences with national caps was installed. With shifting of the preference allocations, that is what we have today. The effect of this was increase Asian immigration and ultimately reduce European immigration. [When I was in Law School, there was a division in the Chinese community between "ABC" and "FOB" due to the seven decades of Chinese exclusion].

Finally, there was NO quota's for natives of the Western Hemisphere. They only had to meet the qualitative requirements [no crimes, TB, VD, some money in the bank, etc etc]. In 1968, a hemispheric cap was imposed. In 1976, the preference system was imposed on Western Hemisphere. A few years later, the immigration system was unified for both Hemispheres.

The net effect of all these immigration amendments have to reduce legal UK and Mexico emigration to the US

Steve_

Yes I know, like I said in reality it is more about defence co-operation, it just seems odd to me that the UK and US haven't come up with some sort of immigration preference for each other's nationals like Canada and Australia have.

You'd think there would be some version of E-3 or TN-1.

Nutmegger