Immigration post

As some of you may have noticed, there was a post about immigration up here.

I have removed it for a couple of reasons: first, a certain amount of my anger was unjustifiably directed, as a sideswipe, against a certain university rather than it being concentrated on the real culprits, i.e. the bastard immigration officials in the bastard immigration agency.

Secondly, I want to be able to talk properly to the young lady concerned before I repost, as I wouldn't want to harm any further pleas.

However, the basic point is that—because the immigration agency gave my friend the wrong information (twice)—her application was rejected, without any right of appeal.

So, the stakes are quite high. If this plea is rejected, my American friend will lose the £820 administration fee and the new job that she was supposed to start in September; she will lose her friends and she will, essentially, lose the life that she has built up over the last four years.

And all because the people in the immigration agency can't be fucking arsed to find the right information. But why the fuck should they care—it's not their lives being ruined by a bunch of pig-ignorant jobsworths, eh?

Unless, of course, these wankers have been told to give the wrong information deliberately so that that fat-titted shitbag, Jacqui "thieving cunt" Smith, can achieve her unbelievably stupid aim of halving the number of skilled immigrants in this benighted country.

Your humble Devil is rather put out. To put it mildly.

UPDATE: from the comments, it seems that nobody who has had to deal with the immigration agency has anything good to say about it. Here's Anonymous on the theory that marrying the girl would help.

You really don't know what you're talking about. To marry my American wife (who has undertaken two degrees here at one of the best universities in the country, paying for both out of her own pocket), we had to spend in excess of £3,000 simply to get permission and a visa to allow her to stay on for one year when her student visa ran out.

We then had to go through quite the rigamarole and cost to get Indefinite Leave to Remain. I won't complain too loudly about that, though, because at least she *got* IDR, which is a lot more than most.

She has never claimed a day of benefits in her life (in fact, if she did so, it would be a breach of her visa and result in instant deportation). For tuition fees alone, she has put somewhere in the vicinity of £60,000 into this country, not to mention the money spent on rent, food and general living expenses which, all told, probably adds up to the same amount again. She has paid full income tax and NI on the pittance she received for working as a graduate tutor and admin worker at the university. To say she is a net contributor to the British economy is to understate things handsomely....and yet, at every stage, the government has done all it can to keep her the fuck out of this country.

I've always been reluctant to whine about immigration, simply for fear of lending credence to the BNP, but when I see hard-working contributors with many achievements, people who are qualified and intelligent and will add to our society, being spat upon while asylum-seeking scum get houses, benefits and free handjobs from the British taxpayer, I have to finally admit: the immigration system is not just fucked, it is actually racist. If your skin is white and you speak English, good luck trying to get into the country.

I won't go into detail about my friend from NZ who, despite British grandparents, a well-paying job in the UK, two degrees, a bank account in the high four figures and a British husband, was refused leave to remain in the UK on the grounds that she didn't have enough pictures of her honeymoon to convince the officious little cunt at the visa office that her marriage was genuine.

Nor will I point out that, in the seven plus years we've been dealing with the immigration office, there has been exactly one occasion on which we dealt with a person who had actually been born in this country, exactly one occasion on which an immigration-related letter was signed by someone with any approximating a British name. (Yes, yes, I'm obviously a racist - but you try playing with the Immigration "Service" for years at a time; see how much you like being milked for thousands upon thousands of pounds under threat that your wife can be exiled to another country on the whim of some Sri Lankan immigrant who barely speaks English and then lecture me on the struggle for racial equality.)

And here's NickM on the persecution of students (not quite on the level of the Chinese, but shaming nonetheless).

From my personal experience the IND are absolute bastards when it comes to Americans. They came very close to deporting a US girlfriend of mine during the middle of her MA. The bloody Vice-Chancellor had to write-in! Her Prof wasn't enough even though her Prof is top of the field and sometimes appears on telly!

What scam they thought my ex was trying to pull is beyond me. I mean folks with phi-beta-kappa Ivy League degrees don't treat London University (for which she was paying beaucoup in fees) as a scam to get a job in a bloody kebab shop.

Like the accursed Ms Smith they combine ineptitude and outright malice in a perfect proportion.

Then there was an Indian lad I knew. BSc Computer Science, MBA, Indian public-school educated (better English than moi). He had job offers here. IND say nyet. Yet the likes of Abu Hamza could live high on the hog here for years on the basis of a bigamus marriage!

Best of luck DK and all my best to your friend. I think I have some idea what she must be going through.

The Home Orifice. Lock all the doors and windows and sarin it, then burn it down, then nuke it from orbit (the only way to make sure).

My hatred of government started entirely from incidents with the IND and their utter evil. Christ, when they were gonna deport my girlfriend me and her mates organised a round the clock phone campaign. Why? Because no bastard at the IND ever picked up and that was the number they'd given. This was an attempt to bombard them with calls saying don't deport her and yes she really is a student and no she isn't moon-lighting as a minicab driver. It was just trying to speak to someone, anyone.

Utter, utter cunts.

And finally, here's a comment from the lass herself...

Fuck the Home Office and Jacqui Smith (or whoever’s in charge of it now). Fuck this Labour Government, and the imminent Tory Government that will preserve this travesty of a points system. Fuck the Maastricht Treaty, the Lisbon Treaty, Ted Heath, and all the other apparatus of the EU that means jobless benefit claimants are considered more deserving of residency in Britain than an employed taxpayer with a net contribution to the British economy. Fuck Brown, Cameron, Clegg, and any politician whose pusillanimous pandering to political correctness has resulted in the exclusion of every foreigner like me, and I’m sure there are many, who is willing to endure endless fees, paperwork, and inconvenience just to have the right to live and work in what I, for one, believed was a great nation.

Britain is the home of liberty, modern democracy, and free enterprise: what the hell has happened to this place? If you haven’t voted yet, go out and stick it to these bastards. I wish I could.

I'm afraid that young Bella misses out a crucial bunch of people to fuck: fuck the British people to whom the politicians are pandering—they are the biggest bunch of lazy, feckless cunts in this country.

Listen up people: there is plenty of space in this country, OK? And dear fucking hell, but we could do with importing some intelligence and innovation, rather than bigoted Bulgarian gangsters, OK?