[urlhttp://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/07/18/uk-migrants_n_3615076.html?utm_hp_ref=uk[/url

Well who wudda thunk it ?

We NEED MORE Immigration to support the likes of me who, hopefully, if the wind blows in the right direction and all the dice fall in my favour, is looking forward to being a drain on society in nine years and two months (not that I'm counting or anything).

Makes sense too, for decades politicians have been wittering on about how an increasing retired population cannot possibly be supported by a decreasing working population - well here's the answer George - get those border control gates open and lets have some of those Romanians and Bulgarians before any other EU country makes a bid for them.

And they can pay for my pension and bloody sod the lot of you

IMHO, both current and previous governments have got it wrong. Labour were too lax in some areas and too tough in others, and the coalition, supported by the kind of nonsensical bluster and dogwhistle kneejerkery discussed elsewhere on the Sin Bin, have made things far too tough. Businesses are finding it too tough and expensive to recruit the right staff, British citizens who happen to fall in love with someone from outside the EU are having their relationships split asunder by draconian new rules.

We do need a new debate on immigration, but unfortunately we won't get a sensible one.

Drains on society are bad.

I propose a sensible investment on wind control and weighted dice so that these leeches on society are eradicated.

I can't wait for my £150 a week back hander so as not to work any more, I will be a right miserable old git, take my dog for a walk on a string to the post office every week and insist that they still pay me in cash, spend forever at the counter until several people are stuck in the queue and then start on about the cost of a first class stamp these days.

Thats assuming that we still have post offices of course otherwise I'll do the same at the local DHL office.

[urlhttp://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/07/26/matt-hancock-business-duty_n_3657472.html?utm_hp_ref=uk[/url

In other news today a Tory minister insists that businesses should employ British workers as the economy starts to pick up, in preference to EU migrant workers and in doing so kicks off a spat with Nigel Farage who must by now be sick and tired of having the wind taken out of his sails by meaningless pronouncements from Tory Central Office, the only thing that Farage campaigns on and the Tories are nicking all his best ideas.

And then towards the bottom of that article is a quote from Labour's immigration spokesman who has a pop at the hospitality, construction and agriculture industries for not doing enough to employ British workers above EU migrants and he too spectacularly misses the point that its not usually the first thing on an employers mind that they must have some of these foreign johnnies in their new vancancies, but merely "how cheap can we get some bodies in these seats, minimum wage prefered".

I read earlier in the week that in the last 12 months hundreds more elderly people a week are dying under NHS care in certain areas than was the case previously or than expected. Unsurprisingly, the extra deaths are concerntrated in poor areas. An investigation into the causes is under way - but it makes you wonder about all this "drain on the nation" stuff doesn't it. So when Jerry Chicken looks forward to becoming a drain then unless he is a man of means I'd suggest he keeps working just in case the State .....

[urlhttp://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/07/26/racist-van-home-office-immigration_n_3658580.html?utm_hp_ref=uk[/url

And in yet more news a brilliant new campaign of disruption seems to be growing nicely against "The Racist Van".

I thought hundreds of millions of our illegal immigrants don't even speak English so how will they be able to read the billboards? How's this going to stop them abusing our hospitality?

Its a two way street though. People here have got to want to work for these businesses and sectors. Its up to them to make the jobs attractive or people will not bother.

Interested that our political masters (

) aren't suggesting that people go to get jobs in other EU states, as they are perfectly entitled to do, of course.

Did you hear him being interviewed? If back peddling were an Olympic sport he be a cert for Rio.

Seconded. I met a incredibly pretty Canadian girl who was over in the UK on a 2 year working visa. Things were going well...and 6 months later we made the decision she was going to try and stay on in the UK, to see if this could be something long-term.

After multiple phone calls to the UKBA (ironically, often speaking with someone who was not British), hours spent trawling through the UKBA website, numerous e mails and phone calls to immigration solicitors and much heartache, we discovered the only way for her to have a good chance of getting in to the UK is if we could show we had been living together in a subsisting relationship for 2 years. Clearly, having only known each-other 6 months this was never going to happen.

Of course, she could have overstayed, we could have got married, had a kid and then put in an application for her to stay using the right to a private and family life. But I didn't fancy the idea of harboring an illegal immigrant.



No, you never get a sensible one. Because most people are too scared to say what they really think for fear of being branded racist.

The Racist Van?

'In the UK illegally? go home or face arrest'

How is that racist? It's silly and pointless but racist? how?

This is part of the immigration discussion that really gets on my nerves, the slight mention of the word immigration and the knives are sharping and the eyes are focusing waiting for your next sentence, if it's even a whiff against...RACIST.

The silly tit for tat childish slanging match of the commons is suddenly out in the open, there never seems to be a common point in which to debate your for/against discussion, everything is too polarised.
You're either with it and a lefty liberal or against it and branded a dangerous racist, pathetic.

I don't think its necessarily racist although if I were non-white and living in one of the targeted borough then I may have a different opinion.

What I do think it is is stupid, and I expect more from public servants, naive, but true.

Its stupid because it isn't going to work, no person who is staying in the country illegally is going to tweet "I'm here, can you send me home please, where shall I meet you ?"

Its clearly a publicity stunt devised by the Conservative party to try and reclaim some of their right wing who have been expressing interest in UKIP's ideas (I refuse to call them policies), a showpiece to say "Hey look, we can talk tough as well", but they are doing it with public money rather than their own advertising budget, its the Home office who are doing this, with public money.

If its NOT a Conservative Party recruitment campaign funded by public money and it REALLY is a genuine Home Office well-thought-through campaign then its gross stupidity beyond words and heads and gold plated pensions should roll.

Such stupidity deserves mockery and its getting it in loads at the moment - no doubt there will be some massaged statistics coming along next week to show that its really working, without any real data to back it up - you know, names and addresses, that sort of thing.

I've been through a similar situation. I'm not seeing what you think the Govt should do. You knew when you started seeing her that she would have to leave. She would have been even more aware of it. Do you really think that short term flings that *might* develop into more should be recognised by the Govt as worthy of giving extensions to visas? I don't.

If the both of you aren't prepared to go through the "long distance thing". If you weren't willing to make the effort to go to Canada for 3 months to stay with her to further your relationship then why should she be given an extension? If they gave extensions to visas for people in short term relationships then pretty much everyone over here on a working visa is going to be hooking up with people to stay longer.

As I say, there were various ways round it if I was prepared to blatantly flout the rules and play fast and loose with the law, as I suspect many do each year.

The UKBA is a completely useless organisation and she could have easily overstayed. It would have been 18 months before anyone had noticed, at which point we could have done a human rights special and she would almost certainly have been allowed leave to remain. If they tried to boot her we would have no doubt had numerous rights of appeal, which could have been dragged out over several years, at great expense to the taxpayer.

What could the Govt do? Off the top of my head, how about a system where you can 'sponsor' someone?

Canada is Commonwealth, we both have the same Head of State. I would have happily provided a financial bond, and offered assurances that she was living with me, in return for extending her visa. Further, she had funds, and would have happily put several thousand pounds c/o HMG.

At the end of a couple of years if we could prove a stable and subsisting relationship then they could return our bonds and grant a 5 year visa, followed by indefinite leave to remain if still together at the end of it.

You may think this is batpoop mad, or unworkable, but a very similar system is already in place. If you are in the armed forces and marry someone from outisde the EU they get a 5 year initial UK visa after which they can apply for indefinite leave to remain. If at any point during the 5 years the marriage breaks down they are supposed to leave, but in reality many have kids and a life in the UK by this point so they claim leave to remain using Article 8 right to private and family life.

Clearly if Miss Canada had been from some second-world EU country with no command of the English language and no intention of doing anything but rinsing our benefits system, there wouldn't have been a problem.

It wouldn't have been you playing fast and loose with the law, it would have been her.



She could have overstayed. But it would have been putting any future visit to the UK in jeopardy because of that overstay. Her work would have been illegal, as her allowance to work would have expired. If you two had split up 2 months after her overstay then she'd have struggled to ever get back into the country ever again.



You want extensions for a *girlfriend* that the armed forces get for being married.

We've already seen that the moronic ad campaign of driving around with a "Illegal immigrant? Go home" has been branded racist. I don't see any racist undertones in that ad, just that it's stupid and a waste of time. If the Govt did what you suggest I think there are going to be genuine calls that the UK system was blatantly racist.

If the "girlfriend" extension to visas was introduced then the number of applications is going to skyrocket. Hardly anyone is going to marry someone to help them stay. Virtually every guy would accept a "very pretty Canadian" as their girlfriend if she needed to stay.

From what you've written it seems that you and the Canadian split up rather than go through the long and hard process of maintaining a relationship. You and her decided that you didn't feel the relationship was worth the effort but you think the Govt should have.

Disco Inferno.

[urlhttp://www.edl.me/[/url

Immigration in this country is simple and straightforward, open and fair as currently applied.



If you are white and can speak and write English then come on in, especially if you have loads of dosh.

If you are white but come from Europe, well we have to let you in but don't expect us to like you in fact we will use the media into making you pariahs

If your skin pigmentation is anything other than "white" then the darker the shade the tougher the entry but can be compensated and scaled by how much dosh you can bring in.

If you have skills knowledge, experience that will benefit both the country and you, forget it as they are irrelevant (see under UKIP, NF, BNP, Tories etc.)

That about sums it up doesn't it.

All a bit complicated isn't it.

It was much simpler when Labour were in office, "You wana come in?", then in you come.

No, not really.

It's a rich/poor issue, not a colour issue.

Now, there are colour issues because many poor countries are not white. But take China and Japan for instance. A Japanese person is going to get into the UK far easier than someone from China would, but most Brits would struggle to know the difference between the two.

Had she been living with me, I suspect I might have been on the hook for something, had they had bothered pursuing me for it.



Agreed.



The problem with the armed forces is that 18 year old squaddies marry girls they have just met because there are large incentives to do so. House, extra allowances, free travel to and from the UK if based overseas etc... These marriages are entered into without any real thought and often end in tears very quickly.



I genuinely don't understand what you mean by this, please explain. That said, the system is already racist. I can bring in anyone from an EU member state, but not someone from outside.



You make it a condition that they have to put a bond down, prove co habitation and also that the sponsor earns a certain amount a year or has a certain amount in assets. Such conditions already exist with the UKBA for certain types of applicant, so this would be nothing new.



Alas, in pursuit of a cheap jibe you miss the point. Even if we had elected to stay together we would had to have proved a sustaining relationship. One of the many criteria required to show this is co-habitation for a period of no less than 2 years. Which is a bit difficult when you have several thousand miles of ocean in between you.

I suspect you have never tried the long-distance relationship thing. And I don't mean Leeds - Manchester, I mean when you live in different countries, sometimes on different continents, and only see each-other once every 3 or 4 months.

The Govt has made it extremely difficult for a Brit to marry anyone outside the EU and co-habit with them in the UK.

I have provided a half-workable solution on the back of a fag-packet. If the Govt gave it some thought a proper system of bringing non EU partners to the UK could be developed.

Ok, first things first.



I've been married to an American for 12 years on Aug 1st. That's if the divorce doesn't come through before then.

I met her when she was here on a short vacation. That short vacation became a longer vacation when she met me. I supported her. She then went back to the US. I went and visited her there for a vacation. She then came over and I supported her for nearly a year. We then got married. We then went to the US where we sorted out her visa for her residence in the UK.

The first half of our married life was in the UK. Then she wanted to go to the US so we went there. At the end of our marriage I wanted to try and make a go of it in the US but circumstances made it impossible. So I came home.

So if you want to suspect I haven't been through a LDR, you are wrong.



Unless you were employing her, they wouldn't have touched you. You are a British citizen, you can love and live with who you want. They'd have only been interested in the illegal overstayer.



I agree. But the fact they are prepared to make that commitment of marriage means that the Govt aren't going to split them up.



We didn't particular choose to allow EU citizens in freely. It came with the package of joining with the EU. We have also been given the right to freely live and work in the EU too. It's just that we are handicapped by the fact we speak the world language and don't particularly want to learn new ones.

There's no difference at the border to a US citizen who is white and one who is African American.

There will be differences between rich and poor.

There's a thread about a mobile billboard asking illegal immigrants to go home. That's being declared racist.



So rich people can have girlfriends from abroad, but poor people can't?



No they haven't. Your girlfriend would have had to expend the same amount of energy on being with you as she first expended to get the work visa. If she wasn't allowed a work visa she could have come over and lived with you and not worked. You and her decided the relationship wasn't worth that. And you want to blame the Govt for that.



And they'd have 10 times the number of immigrants than they have now.

I think you edited something before I replied.



You can't prove co-habitation. For the obvious reason that you were following their rules. But you would be able to show that you were both making trips to see each other.

They would amount to pretty much the same thing.

More horsepoop from the uninformed

Immigration is one if the very few areas exempted from race legislation, primarily because it discriminates on nationality (not skin colour) grounds