bowave

Hello, all!
No, I think there has been a huge misunderstanding here. I am not tarring emigration or immigrants with the same brush. What I am saying is the general state of the UK nowadays with almost anyone being allowed to settle here. I think 90% of you will agree that a country has finite limits to its ability to take in people who either cannot, or will not be of use to its economy. What we have here in the UK now is that we have people from Africa, Europe, Far East, being allowed to settle here, who will not be able to help the economy in the near future, either because they are not qualified in any trade or do not have any wish to better themselves by going out and doing a decent day's work! Why do you think France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Greece, Switzerland and a host of other European countries have very strict rules when it comes to asylum seekers etc? At least in the USA you have strict visa regime that does not allow immigratnts in just for the sake of it, unless they can show they have something of use to the country. What we are saying is that the general "Joe Bloggs" in the street here is not able to get any kind of help he needs, wheras a so-called asylum seeker can walk straight in, legally or illegally, get given free accomomdation, food, child allowances etc. while the citizens of the country continue to suffer! I am sorry its not a case of being racist, bigoted or anthing. Anyway, i think I have said enough on this! Apologies to anyone who feels offended.

Steve1962

I don't think I misunderstand at all.

edwords

Nah, we just have uncontrolled illegal immigration.
BTW, I'm off to Mexico today (legally). Now, for a week, another country will have to put up with me.

joto

I do agree with Bowave in his feelings about un-regulated immigration into Britain. If everyone that wanted to come into Britain had to jump through the same or similar hoops that we did coming to the USA, it would sort out the ones that had something to offer the country and the ones that were coming for the free ride. Also, no financial/housing incentives just for getting into the country with no legal paperwork.

bondipom

The Rio Grande is easier to swim than the Channel. Doesn't Bush have plans to make a lot of the illegals legal?

Steve1962

Oddly enough, they DO have to jump thru similar hoops to get into Britain legally. I know this because my american wife came to live in the UK before we moved to the USA so I have dealt with both the US and British Immigration services.



Steve

doctor scrumpy

The important word is legally, if you seek to be a legal resident you do get to jump through hoops and spend a ton of cash. That is why the west gets so many illegal immigrants and asylum seekers turning up on their doorstep, I would imagine that your average illegal Chinese cockleshell picker working for pence per day could not afford the paperwork to be a legal migrant.

Duncs

I agree totally. We also had to get a visa for my American wife to stay in the UK after we married. It was not an easy process and certainly no easier than the US system. Britain does not allow unrestrained immigration so the comments of the poster above in the original post are crap.

Besides which and on an aside most economic evidence suggest that immigrants add a positive to the economies they enter. As a measured group they are less likely to be unemployed than locals and are more entrepreneurial than locals. 1st generation Immigrants currently add around £4.7bn in taxes to the UK government whilst immigrants cost around £2.4bn in expenses and benefits. As for the space argument the overall population of the UK is declining because birth rates are below the replacement rate so the country is no danger of being overrun by people. The big difference is that the population will be more diverse and if that’s a bad thing then by all means oppose immigration but if you want to argue something better at least back it up with more than taxi driver like comments about being swamped by darkies etc etc

whatever

:lecture: I'm sorry but the soapbox is coming out.......
Expensive Hoop jumping as Steve1962 and Duncs went through in the UK is absolutely right - just as most of us have immigrated this way into America. Hard work, stress, a lot of official, notorised documentation(no secrets allowed here - full life history only), proof that we are not dying of contagious disease, big fee$ interviews and lots of waiting. Like many, my US family had to proove assets and sign to say they would pick up all our expenses if we claim SS assistance in the first 10 years to guarantee we will never cost the USA government and it's people a penny. Too bloody right - why should someone else pay for us?

So when you switch on Sky News and see 100's of men making their way through the Channel Tunnel every week or even worse - Asylum being given to people (seemingly men in their 20's in most cases), that buy an airline ticket to London Heathrow, board, wait for the seatbelt sign to go off and flush their passport (and any other ID) down the toilet you do have to question whether Britain's immigration and Asylum policies are a recipe for enormous and irreversible disaster. These people arrive with no ID so there is no way of knowing who they are or where they belong so they stay!

Now I'm no expert and it may be that eventually these non english speaking asylum fraudsters eventually get turned around. Maybe the police do random checks for ID on Oxford Street where they have a 'Golf Sale' sign stuck to their hand - or perhaps there ARE undercover immigration officials that stop the
6+ Afghanistan women thrusting a dirty note under your nose demanding money, sleeping babies tied around their waist's with a sarong and an empty bottle in hand... but somehow I doubt it.

When I arrived in Atlanta last year for a trip, my Husband was handing in his brown envelope so we took a seat in the 'office'. There was a young child about 9 y/o - latin looking, not a word of English, arrived on a flight before us. He was sitting there, no expression, swinging his legs. He had a ruck sack only and the immigration lady said that he had turned up on his own. He had no ID on him. Apparently there was supposed to be an uncle travelling with him but it turned out that the mysterious uncle did not even board. You know what they did? They put him back on the American Airlines flight he had came from and sent him back to where he left. I was sort of shocked as it was a child - the kid was not bothered by any of it which amazed me looking at my own child and knowing he would be freaked out if it were him. What else could immigration do? From their attitudes I could tell one thing for certain - it was not the first time they had encountered this kind of thing.

Why can't the UK department of immigration swap some notes with the US? Why Is Britain such a soft touch? When you open the papers and see the news, it honestly feels as though these people are taking the p*ss out of us. The UK is such a tiny little island to take so much abuse. Legal immigration is a positive thing but illegal is crippling the UK's already overwhelmed resources.
Our entire family and all of our friends feel that 'our' Britain is slipping away and there is nothing we can do about it. Surely we can't be the only people who feel this way?

Scorchio

Maybe my memory of the event has faded with time - it's been around three years now(!) - but sorting out a visa for my US wife to come and stay in the UK seemed a lot quicker and easier than it appears heading the other way.

Initially here on a six month visitors visa, she headed back to the US, applied for a fiancee visa, and was back in the UK in three months. Six months later, we got married, and the best man headed down to the post office to send off the copy of the marriage certificate, the relevant form and whatever, and she was given a further year to stay and permission to work. A further form posted at the end of that year acquired leave to remain indefinitely in the UK.

Now I haven't been through the process of heading to the US on a marriage/fiance visa, but the posts I've read in these forums give the impression that it's extremely complex and a whole lot slower.

Or maybe we were just lucky??

DaveC

Scorchio, I remember it being straightforward too. It was a piece of piss for us to get a US visa for my wife, we were married in the UK in September 2000 and we flew to the US in October to apply for her visa at the embassy in New York. The hardest thing about the process was hanging about the big apple all day while they processed the application! Things must've changed in the last few years.

swingin scot

"Our entire family and all of our friends feel that 'our' Britain is slipping away and there is nothing we can do about it. Surely we can't be the only people who feel this way? [/QUOTE] "

I feel exactly the same way. It really is sad and something needs to be done about it now! Tony Blair needs to get his finger out of his arse and start focusing on the real problems of the country. I still feel like I may want to move back to the U.K. eventually but at the rate its going I'm not so sure any more. We're already over capacity with people who have nothing to contribute to the economy and these asylum seekers just suck up precious resources that are needed by the people already living there.
Sometimes I feel a bit hypocritical thinking like that since I'm an immigrant to the U.S. but at the same time, I think there's a big difference between people who educate themselves and have something to offer a country than people who just want a cushy ride ... they're laughing all the way to the bank.
Unfortunately it doesn't seem like anything is going to change soon

rogerpenycate

Easy for us as well.
We got married in the US in September 2002
My wife applied to the Bitish Embassy in Washington 2 weeks before we got married . She went back to the Embassy a week later and it was done, visa in passport.
Two days after the wedding we flew to England and had no hassles.
The hardest part was getting a Social Security number, (although the visa gave her permission to work) we waited 14 weeks for that.

elfman

This forum does seem to be attracting a lot of ignorant whingeing racists of late......or has it always been like this and I just didn't notice?

Duncs

For gods sake what kind of hypocrisy is it that has a group of British immigrants complaining about other immigrants in Britain? Whats good for the goose is good for the gander i reckon.