What happens if you mistakenly apply for British citizenship?
freemovement.org.uk
freemovement.org.uk
For instance in Germany the numbers vary from 75%-90% of immigrants expected to be unable to find a job within 5 years. And crime among migrant has also been increasing. This is something that has been neglected in most left leaning media though the BBC did run a piece earlier this year [1]. As the article states, in one area regarded as "an average state" violent crime increased by more than 10% in a single year, with more than 90% of that increase attributable to migrants -- with migrants being twice as likely as German nationals to face reports of violent crime.
I mean these are unpleasant facts, but they are absolutely true facts. This doesn't mean you should refuse all migration or even that migration is bad. But it does mean that you can't simply claim selective migration policies are just about money. Germany took in well over a million migrants. With the vast majority of these individuals not finding work in society that means society will be paying for them. How much is a fair amount of money to care for these individuals? Each $10,000 costs Germany around $10 billion per year. There's some irony referencing money here, but the point is that if you carried these policies out, without end, you'd eventually destroy your own nation, hurting countless individuals in the process, all because you were reluctant to say no.
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What I don't understand is why nobody wants to consider this issue objectively. I expect the above is mostly downvote bait, but that's ridiculous. It's like people on the right want absolutely no migrants because all migrants are evil. And people on the left want open borders because all migrants are amazing and loving people that will integrate fully and peacefully with no meaningful negative impacts whatsoever. This sort of dichotomy is idiotic, but people on both sides are so scared of being seen as being partial to the 'other side' that they become increasingly radicalized meeting in some horseshoe of mutual stupidity. Bah to it all.
Given 12% of Germany is foreign born and the country has 3.5% unemployment, something feels off about these numbers and conclusions.
[1] - https://www.ft.com/content/022de0a4-54f4-11e7-9fed-c19e27000...
[2] - https://www.thelocal.de/20161219/so-far-only-34000-refugees-...
A lot of the issues tend to be connected with policy today and in the past, but get attributed somehow to the ethnic of cultural background of the individual migrant. That's not an objective discussion either. Unemployment is a real issue, indeed, but not granting a work permit, not recognising foreign degrees, expecting new migrants fleeing a civil war to pay language education to the tune of many thousands of euros (e.g. the Netherlands) as part of their path to citizenship while not being allowed to work, and then exclaiming they're a net cost to society and somehow their issues aren't related to our policies, but rather their cultural background, is a myopic view of the situation as well.
Irrespective of root causes though, I'm always struck by the irony of the right saying immigrants are taking our jobs and lazy parasitic welfare receivers at the same time. Which is it?
Anyway, I'd point you to the academic literature in Western-Europe, there's been quite a lot of carefully researched studies on the economic benefits of migrants. I can't say there's much of a consensus, some see a small net benefit, some a small net loss in terms of taxpayer revenue / cost, but there's certainly no overwhelming evidence that migrants are a long-term economic issue, quite the contrary. Most economists will say we need migrants and need to invest more in integrating them into our economies, which means be more permissive rather than restrictive in granting legal status like a work permit.
Some reading on the particular case study you referenced:
https://www.dw.com/en/when-refugees-want-to-work-in-germany/...
https://www.ft.com/content/bea8507e-64cb-11e8-90c2-9563a0613...
Keep in mind that the only countries in MENA that currently have a democratically elected leader are Tunisia and Lebanon.
It's amazing how bad government "democratic nation-building" is at realizing this.
Democracy is, at best, a generational project. This issues we're seeing in autocratic -> democratic states are almost inherent in an overly quick transition.
From a game theory perspective, why would any leaders act in the best interest of the country when there are no institutions and no expectation of democratic continuity?
Most people tend to point to Iraq as the model of "democratic nation-building" but that was probably the best example of what not to do -- send all the bureaucrats (who were, by necessity, members of the Ba'ath party) home and deny them a say in the new government, disband the police and military forces, basically let the people do whatever they want with revenge killings and ethnic cleansing of neighborhoods and keep the people who are (presumably) in charge of law and order bottled up on the military bases with limited contact with the local population.
It still boggles my mind the total shitshow post-invasion Iraq turned into...
Which is to say the area was likely primed for democracy over hundreds of years in a similar manner.
And as anthithetical as communist mono-party government is to pluralist democracy, one can certainly make the case that it can be credited with building institutions and a functioning bureaucracy.
Many organs of which directly mapped to democratic equivalents, as near as I can tell.
As for Iraq, absolutely agreed. And I think essentially everyone still working in foreign policy now believes de-Ba'ath-ization was a terrible mistake.
In India(my home nation), we have a 70 years old democracy. It's broken but functioning. And hopefully, we will get there soon.
Migration crises are the result of a chain of bad decisions made over the years. Avoiding them requires long-term thinking and leaders with foresight.
You are right avoiding migration issues requires leaders with foresight and motivation to make those decisions. It suits some leaders to have their countries always in a state of crisis so there is no clear accountability. It suits leaders in these countries to always point to the West and say that is where all our problems come from. They take no accountability and then they go on holiday and get medical attention in the West. The question is how do we motivate these leaders to make the right decisions, life is pretty good for them as things stand. It's not their relatives jumping in boats to try to get to the West. They fly first class.
But claiming that democracy doesn't suit all populations is something I do not agree with.
Democracy is the only form of government where (in practice) the people have a say in how their country is run.
America is losing is democracy as the money in politics is determining policy more than the constituents voting [1]. China, meanwhile, is vastly expanding its empire and economy under totalitarian control that’s lifting millions out of poverty [2]. Other countries have populations that want clerics or other religious folks at top (e.g. Iran), or tend to have a history of authoritarian rule and a population that respects that. There are many different forms, and I find it to be cultural imperialism to suggest there is an ultimate form of government for all people. That is coming from your own values, which is due to where you were raised and the larger social norms.... not some commandments from the heavens that dictate what it must be.
Democracy can be great (in theory), but it’s not the only way.
[1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/perspectives-on-poli...
And yet American's current president was elected despite him being out-spent 2:1 by Hillary Clinton. In the UK Leave won despite being outgunned and outspent by Remain.
In fact here is a study that claims campaign spending during general elections has essentially no impact whatsoever.
https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/gsb-cmis/gsb-cmis-download-auth...
China was dirt poor because of its long, unbroken history of dictatorship. It's still poor today, although given the fraudulent nature of many Chinese statistics it's hard to know how poor. But the fact that the PRC appears to have learned a few lessons by copying the success of more democratic capitalist nations, is in no way a vindication of dictatorship: there are still so many lessons for China to learn.
Finally, the "cultural imperialism" line. I wonder if you actually are Chinese, to be using that line, because it's one the PRC pushes constantly. The idea that dictatorship and democracy are two equally valid ways to run a country can be easily disproven by just looking at how many people mourn the passing of dictatorships when they fall (not many), or their success rates in various metrics. Democracy is clearly a much better way to run things.
The british and french systems are more likely to be copied nowadays.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Constitution_a...
Do you really think that it's just about drafting a constitution? And do you think that Middle Eastern countries do not have the capability to write their own constitutions?
For example, most of the nationalist/Kemalist leaders were brutal autocrats.
I'd argue that the best among them was Borguiba, but I suppose you've never heard of him.
It was a historical attribute that many "good leaders in the Middle East" shared.
And you specified Middle Eastern, which I took to be exclusive of the Maghreb.
I'm sure there are other examples in North Africa.
But 'name good leaders in the Middle East' -> 'here are some good leaders (many of which were nationalists' -> 'most nationalist leaders were autocrats' isn't arguing the same thing.
I assume we agree that there were in fact many good leaders in the Middle East? Which was my original point.
It's ugly but true.
It also happened in the United States. In Britian. In France. In Germany. In Spain. In Italy. In ancient Greece and Rome.
There are lighter / harsher ways of going about it, though the appropriateness of those is also defined by the opposition's actions.
Successfully creating a national identity, where there were disparate groups before, breaks a lot of people in the transition.
Great, but what does that have to do with my question, exactly? Were Kemalist leaders not nationalist autocrats?
Or are you trying to argue that nationalism is necessary for a country to transition into a democracy?
I'd argue that nationalism is a requisite step for a diverse country, including multiple ethnic or cultural groups within its borders, to become a democracy. (And I'm sure I'm cribbing an old idea in the field here)
It seems like there's little basis for common action without a supergroup which includes, binds, and restrains all otherwise oppositional parties inside a legal framework.
I'd argue that's why uni-party "democracies" tend to be so fragile. When the party becomes the state, then opponents of the party can only be opponents of the state.
This is common among all oligarchs, and a great idea for sanctions. Want to rob your country blind and blow out your liver on fine drink? Congrats - you're barred from entry. Feel free to use the hospital in your home country like the rest of the poor souls you've abused.
Given that the US has offered medical visas to Yakuza leaders in the past, I don't see this ever happening.
It’s unclear how voters here can make a difference:
Arguably, things were worse under Obama than W. That was while Hillary Clinton was running the state department.
Trump seems to be intentionally blowing up the entire federal foreign policy apparatus, which could help in theory, but he’s also doubling down on military policies that lead to indefinite wars. Also, he hasn’t ended any wars or cancelled funding for any of the things the US does to destabilize foreign nations.
Sorry.
In the case of the Windrush Generation, who just happen to be black, the Home Office destroyed archives that contained proof of eligibility of residence, against their own rules, that caused people to become destitute and/or deported when the government wrongly took away their rights:
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-43782241
This poor guy should be thankful that the government didn't deem him a terrorist and ruin his life completely:
https://qz.com/1275866/the-british-government-is-using-simpl...
Just to fact check this, https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-who-destro..., it was a Labour-administrated Home Office that decided to destroy them, although it looks like it was a bureaucratic decision rather than a political one and probably no politicians knew anything about it.
https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/docume...
The voters of all parties support these policies. What is "pandering" in a democracy? The people are xenophobes, they are getting what they want.
And what does shaping in a non-nefarious manner imply? Politicians already give speeches setting out their positions and they do campaigning to try and convince people to vote for them, as part of setting out the menu that is inherent in a democracy. But is this shaping or is it merely offering options?
I don't think there are any non-nefarious ways to "shape" opinion. At most you can argue for your own views and hope the arguments are good.
I mean, it's hard to find a definition of "democracy" that would satisfy everyone but, intuitively, xenophobia and open hostility to visitors who clearly mean well and are contributing to the well-being of the community (Lucas was a Cambridge alumnus and in employment when his adventures started) seems to run counter to every reasonable interpretation of "democratic".
You could be a fully functional democracy and strict immigration laws.
> Democracy itself threatened the free exchange of ideas in a different way. Mill thought it right that ordinary people were being emancipated. But once free to make their own choices, they were liable to be taken in by prejudice or narrow appeals to self-interest. Give the working classes a vote, and chaos could result.
> The upshot was frightening. Paradoxically individual freedom could end up being more restricted under mass democracy than under the despotic sovereigns of yore. Mill famously refers to this as “tyranny of the majority”. But he worries just as much about middle-class “respectable” opinion as working-class ignorance.
https://www.economist.com/schools-brief/2018/08/04/against-t...
Democracy protects the majority from a minority (ie: nobility). Liberalism protects minorities (eg: people an with unpopular philosophy, religious view, ethnicity, language) from the majority.
In any case, I can't really recall any state etc that has gone down in history as being an "illiberal democracy"!
The term illiberal democracy is an especially empty one because more or less any decision can be phrased in terms of positive liberties - e.g. "restrictions on immigration preserve the liberty of voters to enjoy and propagate their own culture".
The idea that immigration controls are un-democratic is a very modern idea and one that is entirely indefensible.
How do you explain these kafkaesque failures of immigration systems around the world in countries without a small group of xenophobes in parliament?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_Office_hostile_environm...
"The Home Office said the suspension of Mr Mallya's passport was a matter for Indian authorities and declined to comment on the individual case, citing its policy of neither confirming nor denying if any extradition request has been received until an arrest is made."
It's been 2 years since India sent a formal extradition request. It has been rejected twice.
Just to explain the absolute ridiculousness of this entire exercise to those who aren't aware: The case is still pending in UK court and the defence is actually arguing about the cleanliness of Indian jails and if adequate toilet facilities are provided for a fugitive:
https://www.business-standard.com/article/current-affairs/gi...
With this action of the Home Office, it has been made abundantly clear that the "human rights" of an economic fugitive far outweighs the human rights of Lucas.
While in London, I saw Mallya's residence from the outside and it doesn't look like anything has changed for him - he still has a Maybach and a mansion near the Baker Street tube station. Seeing him living in luxury instead of being brought to justice really broke my heart.
The reality is that there’s no leniency for perceived good immigrants as these people imagine, and it’s just getting worse as immigration policies are tightened across Europe. Officials are under pressure to refuse as many applications as they can, and it’s easiest in cases like this where you can hide behind a legality. The “good ones” are the first to suffer.
In any system mistakes are made on both sides of an application and most countries have reasonable systems to resolve them, but in the case of the UK authorities, they are no longer acting in good faith.
This seems to be the greatest legal casualty of anti-immigrant rhetoric -- cover for bureaucratic apathy.
Maybe the author of the initial decision acted with malicious intent.
But I'd bet they just didn't care and certified it that way so as to not have the case boomerang back to them. And the political climate gave them flexibility to do so.
The only defense against this seems like a more robust, independent version of a Dean of Students, albeit for everyone interfacing with the legal system. Empowered to bring action against egregious ethical or moral breaches.
The legal profession seems to have no inclination to weed out those lacking ethical standards, so tragedies like Aaron Schwartz go unpunished. Carmen Ortiz, who oversaw the prosecution as US A, now practices law in the private sector. [1]
I get that handling lots of cases with limited resources is difficult. But when you fuck up, and then insist you were right rather than act with some compassion? There should be consequences.
If anything that would seem to mean fewer resources are dedicated to serious criminal situations in favor of the low hanging fruit of someone with a current address and some minor issue years ago....
Effectively this seems to be the opposite of targeting serious criminals.
The guy unfortunately represented easy deportation points due to making an honest mistake. No discretion was used because of the above.
The practical solution is to use a good immigration lawyer for stuff like this. It sucks, it's unfair, but it's true.
These are often failures of systems rather than some high-level racism or xenophobia by politicians. As they exist in a variety of agencies across every western countries, even the super liberal ones.
The problem is a hard one to solve, as the operations of these agencies often gets left on the wayside, regardless of national debates. This lawyer in the article is dealing with the lowest tier, not-giving-a-shit type of government workers, who are likely underfunded, poorly staffed, with plenty of pressure on both ends - just like most gov agencies. That is a system detached from the latest populist outrage.
Remember this whole story started by the guy getting the wrong 'form' when he applied. I'm sure plenty of conservatives would be interested in fixing this particular failure and having a more efficient (and accurate) immigration system.
For those of you interested in how validated legal extortion can become, go look at the VISA and naturalisation fees the UK government charges.
For context, cost of settlement is similar to what the Philippines charges.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/visa-regulations-...
I know people living in London will read this and claim it isn't true, but remember I'm talking about the country as a whole. Immigration is consistently ranked as the most important issue in opinion polls, and a large majority favour admitting "none" or "a few" from most countries. https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/uk...
The definition of xenophobe is 'one unduly fearful of what is foreign and especially of people of foreign origin' it could be that folk are not 'unduly fearful' in the UK where to mention only a few problems related to population density, there is an acute housing shortage, roads are clogged and the National Health Service is close to breakdown in many areas.
That is entirely because the government has chosen to defund the NHS. It has nothing, and I mean really nothing, to do with immigrants using the NHS.
All the research we have shows us that immigration does not put the NHS under strain, that immigration could help pay for the NHS if the government chose to correctly tax the population and correctly fund the NHS, that the NHS cannot run without immigration (we have nowhere near enough doctors, nurses, and all the other varied allied health profesionals and we must source staff from abroad.)
1. The population feels the country is full
2. The population feels the government is systematically biased in favour of huge quantities of immigration and doesn't listen to their concerns
Both feelings are pretty much rooted in reality. The feeling of "fullness" comes from the fact that scaling infrastructure is constrained by physical and social limits like how fast new doctors can be trained, capacity of railway lines etc but the number of people that will turn up if allowed is unlimited. So everything in the UK is constantly on the brink of falling over due to being constantly at max load.
The second feeling is even more powerful. Immigration has become totemic because for so many years the political elite told voters they couldn't control immigration, that somewhere along the line - without any announcement or debate - the entire topic had been removed from the democratic realm entirely, that the UK had to accept anyone who turned up from anywhere and changing that was not only impossible due to the EU, but racist/xenophobic/immoral.
Tell large numbers of people who are concerned about overload that their concerns are racist and they should feel ashamed of themselves, that there should be no limits anywhere despite the obvious physical impossibility of such a policy, and it's a recipe for making the electorate very obstinate indeed.
However it has nothing to do with actual xenophobia. The UK is by far the most racially diverse country in Europe.
> Lucas made his application for naturalisation on 14 May 2014, a couple of weeks before the expiry of his visa.
I'm playing devil's advocate here, but neither indefinite leave to remain OR naturalization would be processed in "a couple of weeks." So even if he had filled the right application he might have ran into problems.
As the article points out, indefinite leave does technically extend their existing visa (whereas citizenship does not), but in both cases you have the same issue: If you're denied then you get deported since your visa has expired.
They should have extended their existing visa first, only then apply for indefinite leave to remain or if eligible citizenship. Otherwise you've built a house of cards, which is one denial away from deportation.
> So instead of Lucas’s application being promptly returned to him [...] It took eight months for him to receive a refusal of his application with the above explanation
That exceeds the government's estimates, but they tell you before you apply it can take 6+ months:
https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/uk-visas-and-imm...
They don't even look at the application until it is processed, and there's a huge backlog. Plus they cannot deny until the application is fully vetted, otherwise they might miss another avenue for acceptance, or it might be a data problem their side.
Essentially the article is complaining that the other applicants that applied before him were processed before him.
It is unfortunate what happened to him after the initial mistake, and I won't defend that, but his mistake wasn't only applying for the wrong thing, he also left it until the last possible moment.
Only if you assume that the Home Office's capacity is fixed. I don't know any of the details myself, but presumably they could have avoided creating such long backlog by hiring more employees.
Home Office visa requests all require the payment of substantial fees, certainly enough to pay for the staff to process them. So you would have thought staffing levels would increase in line with applications without any recourse to annual fixed budgets. (Actually from memory, over the last few years, pax numbers are up 20%+ and staff numbers down 15%...)
Similarly for Heathrow etc not having enough immigration officers to process incoming arrivals... I estimate the average passenger costs less than £2 to process [1], while outgoing flights pay Air Passenger Duty at rates starting from £13 per passenger (economy/short haul) and £78 (economy/long haul). More than enough to pay for higher staffing levels.
[1] £2 is my quick estimate, based on 130m passenger movements in 2016, Border Force having 7670 staff in 2016-17, with annual FTE costs around £32k for base salary, NI, and associated variable employment costs.
I have no idea what the situation is with the Home Office. They very well may have the required authority to increase staff but to assume they do doesn't seem logical since this is against the norm for government agencies.
I'm actually in total agreement, if they wrote an article about half the things that went awry in my life because of my total slackitude towards dealing with bureaucracy there would be a lot of work for some aspiring journalist -- like that time I was an "illegal immigrant" in both Mexico and Guatemala...
Want a strong country? Let anyone who puts 50,000 of your currency in a local bank and has a college degree stay there.
I shouldn't need 250K and have a business plan, or 2 million pounds to invest. I certainly shouldn't have to bond myself to a corporation or get married to be allowed to live there and pay taxes. Ban me from public government benefits for 5 years until I'm a citizen, sure...
But you should welcome the young, educated, and reasonably stable. Who else is going to eventually pay to support everyone else?
Really though further ax to grind... How is it that in 2018 the easiest way to move countries is still marriage?!
It's a points-based system, so there's no guessing involved whether you'll make it; if you don't, you can easily see how you might improve your score.
You can apply from anywhere without first having spent time in Canada as a student or worker (though you do get more points if you do so), aren't dependent on an employer filing for you, and jump straight to permanent residency (akin to Green Card or Indefinite Leave to Remain) within 6 months, which is quicker than the 1+ year Green Card takes.
Unlike the Green Card, where you are from does not determine whether you'll get it; only your points do.
So far it seems to be a huge success; by providing a fair and predictable immigration policy for high-skilled labor instead of one fueled by FUD as in the US.
In general it seems like a system that is designed to help you succeed instead of trying to make you fail.
Edit: you asked about recent developments, Canada just introduced a visa called Global Talent Stream for tech workers that allows you to start working in Canada in 2 weeks, which is crazy-fast for a work visa. You then get more points under Express Entry and might be able to apply sooner.
Lord drugs, third world genociders, sucessfull scammers and high standing criminals. Everybody loves them...
It's surprising in some ways, since the thing that distinguishes government from the private sector is that government is optimized for safety, equality, impartiality, etc, rather than for profit.
But perhaps the way they achieve such impartiality is by codifying absolutely every detail, and then you end up with situations like this one.
Stepping back though, the British immigration system is indeed quite hostile. Possibly one reason may be that once you are 'in', you get automatic access to a huge array of valuable state services; free healthcare, schooling, etc. If you've ever lived in places that have none of these, you can really appreciate how valuable they are.
And I think a 'solution' to that issue could be to have stricter controls on who gets access to all those services, but be less strict about who can come and stay - based on skills perhaps.
And while they're at it they could make it easier for Britons who have married foreigners and had kids abroad, to be able to repatriate - as it is, it's more than a little difficult. I understand the rules are to prevent some the gross abuses that have occurred, eg recently-established Britons bringing in uneducated "wives" from foreign rural villages and so on, but they also deeply affect more legitimate situations.
“But the plans were on display…”
“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”
“That’s the display department.”
“With a flashlight.”
“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”
“So had the stairs.”
“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”
“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”
-from So Long and Thanks for All the Fish
Something a European in London said yesterday: "We're moving outside London. I'm not a racist, but I'd at least like to have some white neighbours." Immigration is bringing in as many of the people you're targeting for not liking immigration.
I've met countless anti-Britain immigrants; not anti as a result of living here and having bad experiences, but perfectly comfortable people who simply think their country's approach to things is better. Some were friends for as long as I could stand it. If you go around talking down the country I live in and need to be succesful then you're poisonous. Constructive criticism fine; poisonous, get lost.
The pro-immigration groups' big mistake was pushing too hard, too fast, giving no time for the needed gradual adjustment, which might not have worked anyway, but had a better chance than bossing the natives around, forcing them to do things they didn't want, and then insulting them. What kind of half-witted strategy is that?
Can you elaborate on this? As someone who just visited London, the opposite seems to be true at least in the service industry; most wait staff I encountered were non-British.
Also I'm not sure if you intended your comment to be patronizing, but it does read that way. Thanks again for the clarification.
1. The Home Office
2. HMRC (aka Her Majesty’s arseholes)
This doesn’t surprise me. I honestly am begining to think that change will only come once senior civil servants meet a dose of mob justice. The public’s tolerance is at breaking point imo.
*at minimum
How exactly do you get from "permission to stay in the country" (aha, it means one has the permission to stay in the country) to "indefinite leave to remain" (uhm... to remain here, I need to leave indefinitely?)
I suppose it can be confusing due to being a homonym to the verb “to leave” but it’s a rather common legal term (see AWOL, for instance).
English, legal English in particular, is rife with apparent inconsistencies like this one. Because of its Anglo-Saxon roots and conquests by both the Danes and the Normans, who asserted their power in part through language, there are many concepts in English for which there are both words of Germanic and Latin, as well as French origin.
My brain breaks whenever I read this. Like who the fuck came up with this name?
“Old English lēaf ‘permission’, of West Germanic origin; related to lief and love.”
The original title ("What happens if you mistakenly apply for British citizenship instead of indefinite leave to remain?") is probably too long for HN, but I'd rather shorten it to:
"What happens if you mistakenly apply for British citizenship?"
Using the US as an example, in the 1800's and early-to-mid 1900's, American work was largely labor intensive agricultural and factory based work. Labor was in huge demand, and as a result the middle class was able to thrive. Today that is no longer the case, and a massive rift between rich and poor is developing as the middle class collapses without an economic foundation to support its existence, this being the labor intensive industries that have largely disappeared in modern Western nations. This has been the development path of all developed nations.
As modern economies are already struggling with worsening labor conditions for the majority of their people and the resulting stresses on social programs, it makes little sense to open immigration to the impoverished masses.
This is a realist perspective. Denying the economic factors at play here will only lead to increased socio economic tension in developed societies at a time when such tension is already at a high water mark in modern history.
The guy was gainfully employed until the Home Office did their thing.
It perpetuates the falsehood that immigrants stress social programmes. In fact, social programmes in Western countries are stressed by the shifting demographics of their indigenous populations, and require immigrants to prop them up.
Social programmes like state pensions and healthcare were created in an age when Western countries had large working-age populations, and relatively small numbers of older, non-working people. However, the decrease in fertility and increase in life expectancy across the West has flipped this. There are too many older people, and not enough indigenous tax-paying citizens to support them.
Politicians in Western countries saw this problem coming in the 1990s. Since cutting social programmes that affect the elderly is politically impossible, they realised the only solution was to liberalise their immigration policies. Immigrants are statistically younger, healthier, harder-working, and pay more taxes than the average indigenous citizen. As a bonus, many of them return to their home country when they get older, so you don't need to pay for their pensions / healthcare.
Ironically, old people in these countries then decided, or were persuaded, that they disliked immigration. So they started supporting parties with anti-immigrant policies, even though this was totally against their economic self-interest. The result is a political paradox that no Western politician has been able to unravel, although populists have made hay exploiting it.
Jean-Luc Picard
But the problem with allowing "discretion" in laws, is whose discretion.
And there seems to be a recent govt enthusiasm for the meta issue of which laws to enforce, and how vigorously, which is certainly a concern.
This is not only obviously untrue because they were quite explicitly bent by the judge, but also untrue in the face of the entire history of law. This is why these appeals exist, for exceptional circumstances. And there's a general attitude towards forgiveness for administrative mistakes.
If there was to be no interpretation or exception to law, we wouldn't need judges or allow appeals to settle these matters.
Law is written by man. Law is interpreted by man. Your ridiculous, strict perspective on the absolute power and immutability of law is that shared by the worst of dictators in history. Reflect on that.
British law is full of opportunities for rules to be bent in the pursuit of justice and common sense.
> if Lucas made a mistake in filing the wrong paperwork, it absolutely makes sense for the consequences to follow
Do you pay British tax? I think you’d be hard-pushed to find even the most ardent anti-immigration Britisher saying they thought this was a good use of their tax pounds and the Home Office’s time.
> the law was clear, and any emotional appeal should be invalid
Said no jurisprudence scholar, ever. There’s a reason that strict liability crimes are so limited in number, why judges in the UK have considerable leeway in sentencing, and so on.
I think that rather depends on whether you regard the role of government here to assist its (future) citizens, or censure them (narrowly avoiding arrest and detention in this case) for what appear to be minor violations of immigration law.
I'm betting that for every 5 calls you make over there, you'll get a different answer. That is also true for the applications made, which sometimes require re-submission in such edge cases (with obviously an incredibly short notice period).
I am not appealing to any sentiment over here, but frankly it's a system that is inherently hostile even towards those who try hard to make sure the application is done right.
I have also played this game with home office - you ring them up and ask "can you remain in the UK as an EU citizen if you are not exercising your EU free movement rights" - the answer will be no, you cannot. Then you can ask if you can be an EU student in the UK without private health insurance - the answer will be "yes, but you are simply not exercising your free movement rights". Then you can follow with "so is an EU student without private health insurance here illegally?" And the answer will be "no".
I've spoken to several immigration lawyers and they all said that what the Home office is doing is strictly illegal - they cannot require presenting proof of private health insurance for the years of studying in order for those years to count towards permanent residence rights. But good luck taking them to court and winning. I'm simply waiting 5 years from the moment when I started working, but it's an incredibly frustrating process. To add to this, I know from my friends that for my particular nationality(Polish) the process for applying for citizenship looks like this - send the application, wait nearly a year to find out it's been rejected, appeal, have the appeal date set 6-8 months in the future, no one from the home office turns up at court, the application is re-reviewed and approved.
It's absolute nonsense, and like you said, it only exists to make the entire process as hostile as physically possible.
That card had never been required at the NHS either.
Took me another £300 (lawyers, official printing excess) to just get the right documents supporting that and I still had no idea if they would even be accepted - because their support line is absolutely oblivious (and to be clear - that is the only support channel they have, outside lawyers themselves who can only advise based on their experience, rather than a set of written guidelines).
The sad thing is that you can still get away with it. But I can see how that turns a huge amount of genuinely honest people away too.
Of course Lucas fucked up by filling out the wrong form and should have had a lawyer review it. And his immigration status was at stake and he blew it. It doesn’t mean these things can’t be fixed by humans making the right decision.
edit: to all that are down voting this comment, please don’t. this is our opportunity to explain why we feel this is a bad view to have, and “silencing” this person’s opinion, if anything, can only have the effect of reenforcing this belief.
this is not a spam comment, this is discussion.
If there is no such rule in place in the UK, then that is where the government did something wrong.
> This article attempts to paint a picture of the poor child, but the law was clear, and any emotional appeal should be invalid.
If the law is so clear, one would think the Home Office wouldn't have treated him this way only for a judge to find he should have another chance, nor presumably, would the Home Office have wrongly claimed a rule that does exist doesn't exist.
When the Home Office itself fails to get this right, it is completely unreasonable to assume that applicants will.
In many countries, being gay is illegal. In some countries, being a woman and walking alone in the street is illegal. “Oh, but they have to respect the law” is a poor defense.
https://www.business-standard.com/article/international/uk-r...
It's been 2 years since India sent a formal extradition request. It has been rejected twice. I can understand UK Home Office's affinity for following rules to a tee when it comes to Lucas' case but why not extend the same for economic fugitives?
This guy certainly has a sense of drama.