Other What's ruining your life right now?

If I didn't need to worry about my wife's job, I'd move to Canada too. It seems like such a simple life.

 

I don't think living in Canada is any simpler than living in the UK, to be honest. In fact, moving to Canada is going to be considerably less simple than staying put in the UK

 

Do I mean Simpler? I mean Safer, friendlier and a higher quality of life.

 

Is there anything specific that leads you to think that Canada is better than the UK in any of those three areas? That's not a trick question, btw

 

Aww, thanks. But I can't go yet; I have a friend to bury.

 

Then campaign to the EU for the reciprocal residency right guarantee that the UK government has already asked for. If you want to set your mind at rest in the meantime:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publi...dence-or-permanent-residence-card-form-eea-pr

If you support a government who ignores a majorty vote by the electoriate, perhaps this is not the place for you after all <cough>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_European_Constitution_referendum,_2005</cough>

 

I went to Van Houtte for a takeout, I specifically asked for their freshest and hottest brew... I got a lukewarm cup of brown piss! One coffee per week, always on Friday, and you dare give me a cup which can't even warm my hands?!

 

There is a special place in hell for makers of pissy-weak coffee [and/or tea].

 

Sure: in the EU any Brit can rock up to the town hall with a passport, their equivalent of a NI number and fill in a one-page form. Job done: they have ILR. In France they can even do it on-line.

In the UK I have to fill out a 86-page form and send it back with my passport, NI number and:
24 years of proof of address;
24 years of employment history;
24 years of proof of income (exactly how much, not just proof of employment);
24 years of exact dates of when I left and returned to this country, even if just for a holiday or conference. Seriously: who remembers that?

Then I have to wait up to six months while they decide.

This is why the EU makes no big deal about reciprocal rights for British immigrants: they already have made it piss-easy for them to acquire ILR and citizenship. On the 25th June the EU publicly stated that UK immigrants' rights would be preserved and Germany has since been talking about giving all UK immigrants automatic citizenship. It is the UK that decided to make this an issue for negotiations and has turned it into a Kafkaesque nightmare.

I do not recall the majority of the electorate voting to deport all EU immigrants from the UK. In fact polls show that even 75% of Leave voters think we should be guaranteed our rights. Even Nigel Farage does. So how would the government ignore the majority vote by guaranteeing the rights of EU immigrants who are already here and have contributed to the community and economy for decades?

 

On second thoughts.

 

This is the sort of response that indeed makes me wonder about some people in this country.

I have a life here: a wife, a career, a home, a family, friends. All sorts of ties formed of over 24 years. I like to think that I made a contribution: I took up an NHS post that was vacant for two years because no psychologist wanted to work on a sink estate in a deprived Northern town (personally I loved it). I currently work with cancer patients: hold their distress and grief, help them find their way through the nightmare and help them rebuild their lives. Occasionally I am the one holding their hand while they are dying in the corner of the ward, and then hold their families afterwards. I am not ashamed to admit that occasionally I have had to fight back the tears. I buy British, support local business, give to local charities, keep bees.

You think nothing of how I, and people like me, have been subjected to a barrage of national tabloid narratives of how we are unwanted invaders, a drain on resources, aliens who just won't try to fit in, while I walk around a hospital that is like the friggin' United Nations for all its immigrant staff. You think nothing of how the government's rhetoric may make us feel, or how it feels to not even be guaranteed of our basic human rights to continue living our lives here. There is not even the smallest empathy.

That is what has been revealed in a chunk of this population. So no, I don't really want to stay anymore, but I have a lot of ties here, so it's not that easy to pack up and go. And I think I've earned my right to be here. I came when it suited them (I remember when I was flown in from the Netherlands twice for a job interview; that desperate was the NHS); but I will go when it suits me.

 

Why is 24 years of proof required and not 3 years of proof like it says on the website and forms for someone with a British spouse?

 

Beats me, but I have to submit proof for all the years I have lived here. Apparently being married to a British spouse makes no difference for EU immigrants.

EDIT:

But somewhere completely else it says that I can make an application as spouse of a British citizen under the rules which apply to non EU immigrants.

Basically the situation is that there are no regulations specific to EU immigrants because hitherto they were not required, us being already covered under EU laws, and hence UK laws, on freedom of movement. Now that these laws won't apply anymore, we kind of dropped back to the default regulations which are hideously out of date and not a good fit at all to our rather unique and unforeseen situation.

The problem is that nobody can clarify the situation because nobody knows. Immigration lawyers don't know, and neither does the Home Office. They are now apparently trying to set up a simplified, fast-track system online for applying for ILR but that isn't live yet, and I suspect won't be until this "negotiation point" has been resolved.

 

I very much doubt you will be required to present 24 years of anything. Have you consulted immigration specialists who have helped EU citizens attain British citizenship?

 

Not yet (they cost). I will probably have to.

I suspect the home office itself doesn't know whether I have to or not...

 

And none of them want to make a firm decision on anything lest it be seen as setting some sort of precedent.

 

A British system that's so complex that is basically unusable.

 

In places that's 100% by design.

 

Very well said - and you *should* automatically be guaranteed your rights, and you are absolutely right to take whatever extra you have learned of value and go and work somewhere that people will value you again as a professional doing an extraordinarily difficult job and not see you as an uninvited invader - especially when you were very much invited.

I'm starting to actually despise the country of my birth.

 

Nexxo, there a lot of people in this country who did not vote to leave the EU, are not racist and anti-immigrant, understand that people like you came here to work not scrounge, are greatly saddened by the rise of racism and sick of the way the Tory government are using anti-immigrant sentiment as a tool to back their own deeply flawed policies.