Comment by jmyeet | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jmyeet | Hacker News Reader

Many of us here are aware of how bad the US immigration system is. It's expensive, time-consuming and arbitrarily capricious. What many may not realize is how UK immigration law has been transformed in the last decade to be much, much worse.

Before ~2010, if a UK citizen married a non-UK citizen and wanted to get them residency and ultimately citizenship, it would be relatively simple and not terribly expensive. It took (IIRC) ~1 year to get ILR (Indefinite Leave to Remain; basically a green card) for their spouse and 4-5 years to get citizenship. In the US that takes 4-5 years (1-2 years to get the green card then 3 years to get citizenship) generally.

Now that process typically takes ~10 years minimum, has all sorts of requirements and will cost you in excess of 10,000 pounds once you add up all the fees along the way. The requirements are things like a "Life in the UK" test but now also a hefty income requirement, going up to (IIRC) ~38,000 pounds per year from next year.

So I have to look at all moves the UK makes in this area through this lens of increasing isolationism post-Brexit. Physical residence cards do have advantages. You can use them as ID. They clearly have disadvantages too. For example, US LPRs are technically required to carry their green card on them at all times. If they lose it, a replacement costs ~$500 (last time I checked) and takes roughly ONE YEAR to replace. If you lose it while overseas, well that's going to be a huge problem. US citizens can get a passport within days if they try and within a day or two if lost while overseas from a US consulate or embassy.

At the same time, there's really no need for a physical card. Any government official or financial institution or employer should be able to verify your status electronically. I can't help but think that this is somehow designed to make life more difficult for legal migrants in some way though.

My wife and I went through it starting in 2012, and were relieved to get through it all OK because by the time we finished I think the cost (and duration) for new applicants had roughly doubled compare to when we started it.

The £38K threshold is ridiculous. To provide some context for anyone lacking it, the median salary in the UK for 22 to 29 year olds is £30K for men and £28K for women. The only group with a median comfortably exceeding that threshold is men aged 40-59. There is no age group in which women's median salary exceeds £38K.

Prior to the changes made by Theresa May in 2012, it took 2 years for a spouse to be eligible for ILR and further year for citizenship. I believe in some cases it was possible for a spouse to immediately aquire ILR if the couple had lived together in marriage while abroad.

Now, it takes 5 years for ILR and the spouse of a British citizen is immediately eliable on acquiring ILR to apply for citizenship. A spouse would not normally be on the 10 year route to ILR, unless they depend on 3rd party sponsorship to meet the financial requirements.

It has become a lot more expensive with increased fees and the Immigration Health Surcharge. IMHO, the worst of it is having to apply 3 times over the 5 year period, all the stress and paperwork involved in proving compliance with the financial requirements, and that it discourages you from changing jobs.

Govt policy and communication is pretty confusing around migration in the UK.

On the one hand, net legal migration in the UK is reaching new all time highs.

On the other hand, the main talking points for the current government is about "stopping the boats" and reducing migration.

If you Google "net migration UK" (in the UK) the first link is a policy document describing steps the Govt is doing to reduce migration:

https://homeofficemedia.blog.gov.uk/2024/02/01/reducing-net-...

I'm a little surprised to hear "Stop the Boats" come from Britain. As the BBC points out, this policy and messaging was previously created and honed by Australia [1].

What you realize when you look into any of this is that it's not about stopping migration. It's about stopping the wrong kind of migration, specifcally undesirable migrants. The US had their own version of this with then-president Trump referring to Africa and Haiti as "sh*thole countries" [2], both the Trump and Biden administrations hid behind health concerns to stop immigration (ie Title 42 [3]) and now we're being forcefed a manufactured narrative around a "border crisis", which simply isn't true. Fun fact: the majority of undocumented migrants in the US are visa overstayers not border crossers [4].

Many, many years ago I remember hearing a phrase that underpinned UK immigration policy, which is "Britain is for the Britons". It seemed like this has only gotten worse.

[1]: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-64898507

[2]: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-referred-...

[3]: https://apnews.com/article/immigration-biden-border-title-42...

[4]: https://www.npr.org/2019/01/16/686056668/for-seventh-consecu...

Nothing to do with Brexit - as you said this has been getting more difficult for decades. Post Brexit it has become easier for people from outside the EU to get some types of British visas so if anything the UK is less isolationist than when it made it very hard for anyone from outside the EU to enter.

MY biggest concern is that with any new system replacing a proven one.

The other is that right to work and right to rent checks may not work as expected. While the article says these can already be done online, not everyone doing them (the biggest problem will be landlords who own a single property) will know what they are supposed to do.

> Nothing to do with Brexit - as you said this has been getting more difficult for decades

Brexit has made it worse for UK citizens with non-UK spouses. When in the EU, the UK had to give residence permits to the non-EU spouses of EU citizens – except for its own citizens. So if an Irish citizen arrived in the UK with their American spouse, the UK had to give the American spouse a residency permit; however, if a UK citizen turned up with their American spouse, the UK was allowed to treat that American spouse as harshly as it liked.

But, the ECJ made some exceptions to that exception, which provided loopholes for UK citizens to get easy residency for their non-UK spouse. The first was the so-called "Surinder Singh Route", named for the 1992 ECJ judgement which established it – if a UK citizen and their non-EU spouse went and lived and worked in another EU country, e.g. in Dublin, for a reasonable period (never precisely defined, but 3 months was generally accepted as sufficient), then the UK had to give the non-EU spouse a residency permit on their return to the UK.

More recently, another ECJ judgement, the 2017 Lounes judgement, established that an EU citizen who moved to the UK, and then naturalised as a UK citizen, was to be evaluated under their non-UK EU citizenship when their spouse was applying for a residency permit – which meant some non-UK spouses could get residency permits under the liberal EU rules even without having to spend a period of residency elsewhere in the EU.

But, of course, Brexit has closed all these loopholes. So Brexit has made the situation objectively worse for non-UK spouses of UK citizens seeking permanent residency in the UK.

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