I speak as an immigrant. I see a lot of comments not being too kind to people who aren't welcoming of immigrants. As a person, I actually do understand. Not everyone is going to like me. As an African I do wish some of this energy would be directed to the African leaders that make their countries so terrible that someone feels it is better to jump on a rickety boat in search of a better life. These African "leaders" send their kids to school in the west, they go to the west when sick. I wish all this energy against people who don't want immigrants is directed at the people who made us immigrants in the first place. My first choice is a return to my country.
>These African "leaders" send their kids to school in the west, they go to the west when sick.
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.
There have been some efforts by immigrants interestingly enough in the UK harassing a minister from their home country[1]. There should be more of this.
[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lceJAw6iSck
It's much easier to hate on an individual in front of you than a president, policy, regime or country (and takes less effort). The bigger grind for me is that the same countries (UK in particular) hammering citizens from those countries welcome leaders with open arms and provide them with refuge, the ability to buy sheltered properties etc. The UKG loves nothing or nobody but money, I just wish they would be upfront about it so their policies were consistent with their actions.
100% with you. At some point, someone has to ask who/what is causing the immigrants. I know the answer isn't simple. Some will even say the West is caused all the issues in the first place. At some point though we have to start discussing concrete ways of changing the status quos and moving forward. Changing UK immigration laws might help a few of us get into the UK but not much will change in the home country. The same African dictators rigging elections are allowed to vote on UN resolutions and make grandstanding speeches at global conventions.
Yes, that's the point I'm making. The west maintains the status quo because it's of benefit to them, they just don't want any of the side-effects (including increased migration). Colonization hasn't gone away, it's just changed form.
I think you can also look at things aside from money. Education and wealth also tend to correlate with individuals that are able to peacefully integrate into a society. Granted there are exceptions -- Osama Bin Laden came from a billionaire family and was well educated, but they are indeed the exceptions. By contrast people that are impoverished, have little education, and especially that may hold more extreme religious views or have different cultural views than the countries they're migrating to, can result in major issues.
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.
If somehow it was not clear, the numbers were referencing (in the case of employment) and being driven (in the case of violence) by the recent surge in refugees Germany took in. The 75% comes from Aydan Özoğuz, commissioner for integration, refugees and integration in Germany [1]. The upper end comes from recognition that they're taking an optimistic view of things. As of the start of 2017 Germany had taken in 1.2 million migrants, and from government numbers 34,000, or 2.8%, were employed, with a fair chunk of those in temp jobs. [2] Getting to 25% employment from there in 5 years is perhaps not impossible, but it's extremely optimistic.
No, it's not clear, because you're talking about refugees in particular vs immigration in general. Two groups subject to very different laws and circumstances.
Sure, discussing this topic is important. Let's not act like it's not discussed and researched daily, in my experience the entire narrative of migrants is completely dominated by this particular debate, we barely discuss anything else when we discuss migration. I agree the discussion isn't always objective, but if anything I find it errs on the side of over-attributing issues to ethnicity or cultural background.
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:
It may be even more fundamental: Good leaders emerge from a good democracy. Maybe what the Middle East needs is to copy from the constitutions of successful democracies. Even adopting just our First Amendment would be a decent start.
Democracy isn’t always the best form of government for a given population. I think all attempts to force it that have blown up are a good demonstration of this. It depends a lot on the culture, the would be leaders, etc. It should be emergent and home-grown, not exported.
But how can you say that’s ideal for all? And that’s even suggesting that the mechanisms underlying keep that going for real and not just in name.
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.
America is losing is democracy as the money in politics is determining policy more than the constituents voting
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.
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.
> It should be emergent and home-grown, not exported.
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?
IDK, (most of) the Eastern European former Soviet satellite states did a pretty good job of it in less than a generation.
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...
I'd defer to someone more intimately aquatinted with Eastern Europe's pre-Soviet history, but my impression is that it followed many of the same themes as Western Europe.
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.
Precisely. What proponents of "export democracy" forget is that it takes time to develop a democratic tradition. Democracy in the US and the UK is centuries old. In the case of France and Germany, it took bloodbaths to turn them into democracy in a short time. Not different to what happened in few Arab states.
In India(my home nation), we have a 70 years old democracy. It's broken but functioning. And hopefully, we will get there soon.
You are right, but faced with a migration crisis such as the one we have what would you have the West (because that's where most migrants are heading) do?
For starters, we can (1) stop invading and destabilizing countries and (2) stop supporting autocracies and monarchies even if it goes against our short-term interest (e.g., access to oil).
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.
Your point no 2) is in agreement with my parent post. In short, rather make life uncomfortable for the leaders that are causing people to migrate from their countries. Your point no 1) is something the voting public in the country (e.g. US or UK) need to make known to their public representatives.
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.
The us constitution has not been a great model. Latin america was the main place it was copied, and that didn’t work out so well. And even america had a civil war.
The british and french systems are more likely to be copied nowadays.
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?
My point was that getting rid of some of the terrible leaders did not solve any problems, indeed made things worse by most measures. Tribalism and perhaps worse - the rule of violence leads to bad leaders. I imagine even good people would have to be bad to stay on top in those societies.
Usually the ones who were proponents of national self-determination and/or assassinated: Yitzhak Rabin (Israel), Yasser Arafat (Palestine), Mohammad Mosaddegh (Iran, who the US deposed), Anwar Sadat (Egypt), Gamal Abdel Nasser (Egypt), Mohammed Daoud Khan (Afghanistan), Faisal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud (Saudi Arabia).
Gotcha. My day job doesn't use foreign policy acronyms.
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.
Name one Kemalist leader in the Middle East who did not persecute a segment of the population, or allowed the opposition to participate in fair elections.
Nationalism by definition involves suppressing a segment of the population (usually opposed to the unifying party and/or allied with external parties).
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.
> 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.
You first tell me who the hell you call “Kemalist” then I will tell you whether or not they are Kemalist at all. Dont throw around “Kemalist” liberally to make a point. Then we can discuss further.
Exactly similar thing in india. This is happened with all indian Brahmins settled in United States. Top on the caste ladder, denied education to other castes and when british conquered india and gave education to other castes they started to move to united states, the Brahmins who are staying in india have missed that chance and can not compete now as other castes are competing too.
Not sure about the UK, but here in the US, there’s been a consistent (since ~ WWII, at least) bipartisan effort to make sure those sorts of leaders run countries like yours.
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.
Please, no need to apologise. We all in this world to do the best we can. I presume the American people have their own problems they need to solve and if you have some capacity to help us, I would rather you put pressure on dictators causing immigrants. That's my opinion. Others will have different opinions on where the energy should be spent.
This is par for the course in the UK right now. The Tories have been pandering to the xenophobes and racists for some time now an their "hostile environment" for immigrants isn't restricted to ones who are doing something illegal, instead it seems to be targeted toward making life miserable, if not impossible for any immigrants wether they're doing the right thing or not. They have no problems breaking their own rules and aggressively using the courts (appealing cases and then withdrawing their claims the day before the hearing, for instance).
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:
> The Tories have been pandering to the xenophobes and racists for some time now ... 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
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.
This raises an interesting question: what happens to a democratic society when "the will of the people" embraces principles and ideas that are profoundly anti-democratic?
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".
I think you're loading 'democracy' up with some extra values there that aren't really part of the definition. Democracy just means governed by the people. It doesn't mean liberal, or enlightened, or progressive, or open to visitors, or anything like that. Just governed by the people. The people can be left wing or right wing, progressive or regressive, whatever.
Yes. Not every form of democracy is a liberal democracy. In a liberal democracy, some entity such as the judicial system is supposed to prevent the rest of government from tyrannizing minorities.
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.
This again depends on a definition of "liberalism" accepted by all, but I find the term "illiberal" or "non-liberal democracy" (i.e. the opposite of a liberal democracy) to be very difficult to interpret. Is it a democracy in which people have the right to vote, but their liberties are not protected by the law? But- the right to vote is a liberty. And then again, how come people voted to have their liberties not protected by law? What are they, idiots?
In any case, I can't really recall any state etc that has gone down in history as being an "illiberal democracy"!
Don't try and parse the term literally, the term is a contradiction - there's no such thing as an "illiberal democracy" for the reasons you specify. People who use that word simply mean "democracies where my personal views on things like immigration don't win".
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".
Would you please stop using HN for ideological battle? Accounts aren't allowed to use this site primarily for that, and this looks like exactly what yours has been doing.
Also, your first paragraph breaks the site guidelines pretty blatantly in other ways. If you'd please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and use HN as intended from now on, we'd appreciate it.
Wikipedia: "Liberal democracy is a liberal political ideology and a form of government in which representative democracy operates under the principles of classical liberalism. Also called western democracy, it is characterised by elections between multiple distinct political parties, a separation of powers into different branches of government, the rule of law in everyday life as part of an open society, and the equal protection of human rights, civil rights, civil liberties and political freedoms for all people."
I promise you, I'm not in league with Wikipedia editors to make this stuff up. It is literally textbook.
This is indeed not a new question. The Economist is currently running a series on classical liberal values. From a piece on John Stuart Mill:
> 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.
Every country ever has had borders that were closed to immigration to some extent, that is part of the definition of what a country is. The USSR had closed borders to prevent emigration however I do not know of any democracies that do this, although one could argue America's exit taxes are a soft form of it.
The idea that immigration controls are un-democratic is a very modern idea and one that is entirely indefensible.
Why should politicians shape opinion? What makes their opinions so much better than that of their voters? Their role is to reflect opinion and implement it.
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 find it strange how so often the failures in some low-level bureaucratic system or law enforcement agency, whose failures have existed and were alive well before these 'xenophobe' politicians were ever a thing, gets blamed on some abstract shift in ideology of a small group of politicians. As if all new popular ideas instantly trickle down to all government policy... and everything is to blame on that.
How do you explain these kafkaesque failures of immigration systems around the world in countries without a small group of xenophobes in parliament?
Except this is not a failure mode of the bureaucrats, but is deliberate policy handed down by “these xenophobic politicians” who headed up the home Office for the past eight years:
While the Home Office in UK was vigorously trying its best to throw Lucas out, the same Home Office in UK is trying its best to keep economic offenders like Vijay Mallya and Lalit Modi from being deported: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/28/india-asks-brita...
"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:
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.
Anti-immigration people in various countries often argue that they just want to prevent “bad ones” coming in, they’re not looking to throw out the “good ones”.
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.
There are plenty of gov agencies where 95+% of the time they deal with 'bad' people that they become very ill equipped (or mentally unprepared) to deal with the odd 'good' one when they come by. So the whole system becomes a cynical exercise, as they get so deluged with people forever fighting to game the system that they forget that good honest people still get forced through their meat grinder. Or they simply suck at 'customer service' like the classic DMV-worker cliches.
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.
This is not Europe wide. I have current and first hand experience of two EU countries in this regard and nothing has changed in the last couple of years.
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.
Yup. I think a lot of this is Goodhart's law in action. You measure a bureaucracy's effectiveness by how many people it can kick out / refuse and this is what happens.
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.
Agree. I am not aware of any hostility toward US immigration in the UK, this is just the Home Office being bureaucratically unhelpful. Having gone through the naturalisation process myself after the Brexit vote, and without a lawyer, I can confirm that even for EU nationals the rules are as clear as mud. And the fees are clearly designed to prevent a cleaning lady from applying.
In the US they explicitly have stopped targeting those with serious criminal violations in favor of whomever they come across.
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.
I don't think what triggered Brexit was "bad immigration". The wave of immigration that triggered the reaction was mostly a polish immigration that integrated well. I think the problem was rather too much immigration.
Can't say I'm surprised by this outcome at all. The British government has long since been screwing over would be immigrants in fees, bureaucracy and rules. The point to note is -- had he not been an American with resources, and instead, say a Somali refugee, the outcome would have been very different and we'd never have heard about it.
For those of you interested in how validated legal extortion can become, go look at the VISA and naturalisation fees the UK government charges.
As someone who recently applied for a UK Visa, I was shocked that it cost around $120 for 6 months. A comparable US visa for 10 years costs around $160.
I moved to the UK seven years ago, and have clearly noticed a change in the time I've been here. It wasn't perfect to begin with, but there is now a clear popular attitude against non-British people. It's worse against non-white people and eastern europeans, but there is also a level of general xenophobia. Of course, this is not the prevailing situation in London and cosmopolitan cities, but it is prevalent among the electorate, and the government and civil service is slowly starting to reflect that preference.
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...
Polls consistently show that Britain is one of the most tolerant countries in europe (debatable wether that is a good thing if it leads to intolerance in the long run ...) in any case I would suggest it is more likely the common language makes any alienation feel more raw. Alienated in a european country - can often be charitably put down to language differences (and learning the local language is a greater signal of integration when it's not english).
Yes, there are two reasons that interact for this:
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.
If you look at the graph here https://www.migrationwatchuk.org/statistics-net-migration-st... you can see migration levels consistently rising from 1975 to 2017 with 250,000 expected this year. Is there any level of migration for which critics would not be perjoratively labelled xenophobes by you?
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.
> 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.)
I have experience with both the UK and US immigration systems. I agree, it is very easy with how complicated the processes can be to make mistakes, even seemingly big ones, just by misunderstanding a single requirement. Even non-immigration lawyers make serious errors.
> 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:
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.
> Essentially the article is complaining that the other applicants that applied before him were processed before him.
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.
Since the Home Office is a government agency which operates on a fixed budget it is unlikely they can just hire more employees as the number of applications rises. They can request a budget increase for the following year so they can hire more employees then, but the decision to approve the request is a political one outside of their hands.
Home Office delays are a deliberate political choice...
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.
Just because an agency charges a fee which covers or exceeds their costs doesn't mean they get to keep those fees. They may go to the government's general revenue fund or they may be used within the Home Office to fund other activities within the agency. Even if the fees are directly returned to the immigration agencies with the Home Office they still may not be authorized to hire additional staff without prior approval through the budgeting process. Most governments don't like to give agencies unfettered ability to increase agency staff.
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?!
Agree, though you can't have exclusively a wealthy and educated immigration. Most western countries have a critical age pyramid problem. There is a need for mass immigration too. Though it would probably be wiser to diversify the sources of immigration, and to consider the cultural compatibility too.
Express Entry is Canada's program for granting permanent residency to workers in skills shortage areas (sort of like a H1B and Green Card combo).
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.
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.
I mean the British bureaucracy has an extremely well chronicled tradition of Kafkaesque obstinacy and causing chaos via slavish adherence to rules that long predates this issue right. I believe Douglas Adams used this fact as the basis for a series of books.
(After finding out his home was scheduled for demolition and being told he'd had ample time to file a complaint)
“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.”
"Arthur reached out for the bedside light, not expecting it to come on. To his surprise it did. This appealed to Arthur’s sense of logic. Since the Electricity Board cut him off without fail every time he paid his bill, it seemed only reasonable that they should leave him connected when he didn’t. Sending them money obviously only drew attention to yourself."
If the wait for review/decision is going to be months, there really should be some kind of pre submission check to test validity. This could be done by one’s lawyer usually, but an automated screening and/or immediate cursory validation by government seems like it would make sense. Maybe only extend validity of visa during processing if it passes the validation.
Automated screening? For a process that can result in the immediate detention and removal of persons when the system makes a mistake? I'm afraid this doesn't sound like such a great idea, although I'm sure the Home Office would love it.
Much mumbo jumbo in the comments. Immigration is seldom a problem anywhere. Excessive immigration is usually a problem everywhere. The coming of Britain's and Europe's immigration backlash was obvious nearly 20 years ago. Surprise, surprise, people like their culture and their homeland. Who would've thought?
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.
Not sure what's unclear. Some people are pro-immigration, and some are anti-immigration, and some don't give a fuck, and some are undecided. The London wait staff you encountered, and the 65+ million people you didn't encounter, the overwhelming majority of whom are not wait staff, and most of whom live outside London, are all somewhere on that spectrum of opinion. The words you selected, obviously, I think, refer to those who are anti-immigration. If you're willing, you probably don't need to be forced, right? So, unlikely I was referring to the pro-immigration people. The first words of that paragraph are "The pro-immigration groups' big mistake", which hints at the pro-immigration stance not working out too well, so clearly there's push back from people who are anti-immigration, and those are the people who have been forced to accept immigration they didn't want. And my point was something like this: http://www.longlongtimeago.com/once-upon-a-time/fables/from-... If your knowledge of the country is so entirely bankrupt I don't think you should be wading into this. Harsh, maybe, but fair.
Thanks for the clarification. I interpreted this as British people being forced into things they didn't want to do (such as menial jobs) but I realize now that you meant that they were forced into the decision of allowing immigration that as you rightly pointed out they didn't want.
Also I'm not sure if you intended your comment to be patronizing, but it does read that way. Thanks again for the clarification.
"things they didn't want to do (such as menial jobs) " -- I didn't say anything of the sort, there was nothing to interpret, that's pure projection on your part, so you're calling the British arrogant and lazy. Patronising, yes, I thought you needed it.
There are two* UK government departments that are full of incompetent decision makers and absolutely no culture of common sense or doing the right thing:
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.
"Indefinite leave to remain" sounds like some almost Orwellian concoction of meaninglessness to me.
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?)
"leave" as a noun that means roughly "permission" and the verb form of "leave" to mean "depart" both comes from Old English words (the noun form from "leafe", the verb form from "læfan") that has meanings closer to the noun form ("permission"), but the meaning of the noun form is older, as the verb form first took on the modern meaning ca. 1200.
“Leave” is a noun in this case and indeed a synonym of “permission”.
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.
Meta comment: "blattimwind" comment is grey at the moment. What is the point to down vote someone that has just misunderstood an arguably ambiguous expression ?
In addition to providing feedback to author of a comment, downvotes also establish the order of comments on the page. If a comment is based on a simple misunderstanding, it's unlikely to result in productive conversation, and thus it may be a benefit to the group to deemphasize that comment to encourage others to focus their attention elsewhere.
What a weird submission title ("Mistakenly apply for British citizenship instead of indefinite leave to remain").
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?"
In this case, Theresa May presided over the Home Office before she became PM, and spent 6 years promising to cut immigration but instead of actually doing that in a transparent way with quotas etc. that would open the door for discussion about whether or not said rules were right, she instead did her best to create a hostile environment for applicants instead. This practice has continued in other areas of government under her leadership, such as the benefits system. It's a fairly uniquely passive aggressive approach to government that seems to take Kafka or Gilliams Brazil as a recipe rather than a warning.
The British Prime Minister made a completely unfullfillable promise to bring down immigration numbers - despite the he country being part of the EU and thus having free movement making it impossible to hit his targets.
Because this mistake cannot be admitted the civil service is trying to hit impossible targets amd as a result cases like this occur on a daily basis as they look for any possible reason to deny an immigration case.
The same reason that people living in nice neighborhoods with nice houses don't invite all the people living in the slums to come live with them. This happens in non-English speaking countries also.
My point is people all over the world with high quality of life don't want to lower their quality of life to benefit others. It happens on a city level, state level, country level, and global level.
With sufficient resources, you can buy access to all countries, just like you can move to the nice part of town.
Dunno. They might just be more popular destinations to immigrate to, being (mostly) stable and rich, and English being one of the more common second languages around the world.
Nope, try emigrating to any country and see how un-dickishly they behave. Switzerland, for example.
Immigration is not easy anywhere, and I'm always surprised when people assume it will be - or spend decades not sorting out their status, then cry to the media when they're threatened with deportation.
There are legitimate and rational reasons for not wanting a large influx of poor immigrants into a developed nation.
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.
This isn't "realist", it's the usual clichés and lies that are always propagated by people trying to justify anti-immigrant sentiment.
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.
I don’t think the government did anything wrong; The rules aren’t meant to be bent, and if Lucas made a mistake in filing the wrong paperwork, it absolutely makes sense for the consequences to follow. In these serious legal matters, you need to seek counsel. This article attempts to paint a picture of the poor child, but the law was clear, and any emotional appeal should be invalid.
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.
I don't know how to communicate this, or even if it is possible. But the question of justice has concerned me greatly of late. And I say to any creature who may be listening, there can be no justice so long as laws are absolute. Even life itself is an exercise in exceptions.
Try calling the Home Office support line and ask them a simple question: "If I had been a student for the past 5 years and had fully supported myself by working for the same period of time, do I need to present you with the health insurance papers that are required if you are a student?".
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.
Yep, I'm on the same boat. I've lived here for 8 years but I can't apply for permanent resident status(and hence for citizenship) because I didn't have private health insurance while I was a student.
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.
The fact is that I had the EHIC (European Health Insurance Card) when I came to the UK. It's validity is 2 years, and they (officially) do not accept documents which are outdated. How do I then even prove I had it for 5 years?
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.
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.
The point isn't that Lucas should break the law; the point is that the laws are stupid and should be changed, as illustrated by the egregious situation one can be found in when making a simple mistake. 'Appeal to emotion' here is just basic compassion for someone who does not deserve what happened to them, and hope that similar situations won't happen again.
Thankfully while the beaurocracy might like it better dishing out cold refusals based on a misfiled form, the law doesn’t work that way. You don’t actually get to throw away someone’s station in life because of a paperwork mistake. And we see once a judge was involved in fact the law made the right call.
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.
If you need a lawyer to decide what form to fill out, that might be an indication that the form is bad. Do we really want a world where you need to consult a lawyer for every communication with the government, so as to be sure that the government doesn't try to screw you over?
The judge disagreed with you, and because the Home Office chose to treat it this way instead of treating it more reasonable it wasted tens of thousands of pounds of taxpayer money and reduced its tax revenues.
> 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.
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?
Not everything that is legal is right, and illegal is wrong.
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.
Well, I don't know the details of British law on this, but the German constitution has as its first article "Human dignity is unviolable. To respect it and to protect it is the duty of all institutions of the state." So, not bending the rules in such cases would actually potentially be illegal.
If there is no such rule in place in the UK, then that is where the government did something wrong.
> I don’t think the government did anything wrong.
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.
so, to confirm, you believe that destitution, embarrassment, shame, depression, and eventual arrest - not to mention having to come to terms with being forced into a place you have never lived before - are reasonable consequences of being slightly cavalier about paperwork? if so, 8 months to respond to an application should elicit a much harsher punishment.
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.
