✧✦Catherine✦✧can we talk about how deliberately, purposefully cruel the UK settlement (permanent residency) process is
super priority for 1000 GBP gives you the result on next day
btw it's 3226 GBP per person
imagine paying several of your monthly salaries for this application (even as a tech worker that is steep, the base cost is slightly above my take home pay right now) then having to travel to your home country because of a family emergency and getting shafted by UKVI as a result
i'm well-off enough that this stuff only feels like an existential threat to my life instead of being an existential threat to my life, and i can afford to pay all the stacked fees (even if it seriously eats into my finances). i don't expect most people to be so lucky
kit@whitequark yes. By design.
Even as a kiwi, about as close to British for immigration purposes as you can be without actually being British, I found the whole process frustrating, and in the intervening years I’ve watched them pile on humiliation after humiliation, just because they can.
@hypostase home office is the type of organization that would invent Racism 2 because they found the original one insufficient
@whitequark ouch. I felt that one. Not even a little bit wrong.
Arch 
@whitequark I've heard that the Home Office operates at an insane profit because of these fees.
Graham Sutherland / Polynomial@whitequark yeah when Theresa May said "hostile environment" she really fucking meant it. it's grim.
@gsuberland it's convenient that my life has prepared me for literally everything around being adversarial :)
ChuckHarrison wrote some stories based on that premise :-) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deathworld
Tengu
@Tengu UK settlement
Howard Chu @ Symas@whitequark @Tengu Irish citizenship requires continuous presence in Ireland for 365 days up to the date of your application (along with 5 years legal residence). That's one reason I didn't apply until 3 years after I was eligible, was always traveling.
@whitequark @Tengu yeah.... who tracks it - they required a complete list of dates of entry/exit along with photocopies of all relevant passport pages with entry/exit stamps. Great fun.
And then after you've gathered all required paperwork, they're bound to say you got something wrong. I hired an immigration lawyer (solicitor) to help - they reviewed my stuff and submitted the paperwork on my behalf, so they dealt with any pushback first.
ilmari@whitequark @hyc @Tengu I've lived in the UK for nearly 20 years and have EU/EEA Settled Status (can I have a "FUCK BREXIT!"?), but I still haven't got around to doing the citizenship dance because of the ludicrous paperwork requirements (need to list every time I've been outside the UK in the last 5 years) and fees (citizenship application "only" costs £1839, plus the language test).
Jess Robinson@whitequark will be going up to 10 years soon, I hear
Coral (bleached era)@whitequark yes, it is. I didn't even know about the police registration requirement.
Many people who consider themselves internationally-minded and tolerant have no idea about any of this.
@coral that one was removed a few years ago
artemist@coral @whitequark police registration is weirdly common, e.g. in the us non-citizens have to report their address to uscis after moving. in italy non-citizens entering from other schengen countries are required to register within 8 days, or stay in a hotel that performs the registration. china has a similar registration requirement, but hotels that accept foreigners will handle it.
Δ-44203.1 'Carbon' 
mx [@whitequark, @artemist, @coral], the Netherlands, Poland and Spain have similar requirements too, and those are just the countries it (various levels of officially) lived in recently.
@1 the difference with the US, CN, and IT requirements is that they only apply to foreign citizens. I'm not sure if NL, PL, or ES have similar requirements for their own citizens
mx @artemist, if this one recalls correctly: in [Poland, Spain], non-citizens (even if they are from the EU) need to register their address with the police and update it when they move (in Spain even when they change their occupation!). in the Netherlands they need to do so with the immigration and naturalization service.
in addition, all people (including citizens) are required to register their address with the municipality in [the Netherlands, Spain]. for Poland this one is not completely sure how the process works.
Owen Anderson@artemist @1 In Spain everyone, including citizens, has to register their residence location with the ayuntamiento (municipality). This is a major part of obtaining access to government and financial services, and you have to bring copies of your registration certificate to all kinds of bureaucratic appointments.
Dr. Sobek
波鉄 (Hatetsu)@Sobex @resistor @artemist @1 As for hotels, I think it might be a Schengen or EU requirement to register stays by foreign (not just third-country) nationals at this point?
As for permanent stays, (EDIT: actually, you do have to register all stays longer than 30 days. Unlike some other EU countries, we don't have any particular requirements other than that you have an address and your residence's owner is there to vouch for you if it's someone else, *I think*). As for citizens, I believe keeping the 'adres meldunkowy' up to date was supposedly made optional a decade ago or so… (EDIT: Or at least that's how people think of it these days, even if it isn't technically true.) I'm not sure how much of an improvement that is, given that you're supposed to update your address in a bunch of separate registries, like the taxpayer registry or the voter registry, that are now centralized… but separately updated.
Inga stands with 🇺🇦 🇵🇸@1 @whitequark @artemist @coral Germany too, have to register IIRC within 14 days of move. Regardless of whether you're immigrant or citizen
Mini@whitequark its disgusting , every year they make it hharder and pricier, so many of my colleagues have had trouble with thr process and excess scrutiny applied for no reason other than where they were born
Millie@whitequark I'm already anxious about this for my wife when she reaches 5 years on her visa, as well as the 4k+ GBP we need to renew her visa in less than two years, god this entire thing is plainly racist and discriminatory
@Atatra that's why i thought it extremely important to get a 5 year GLT visa even though they charged like a metric fuckton for it as the "NHS surcharge" (doesn't go to the NHS)
@whitequark when we paid the 'nhs surcharge' for my wife's visa application, we pooled the entirety of both of our savings and came within 10's of pounds of not having enough, just barely scraped by. and while i'm glad now we have an income, how the hell are you meant to marry for love as a poor or disabled person without feeling like it's basically a paid privelige to choose someone who isn't born here
@Atatra i negotiated my employer paying that (mainly because between my ex stealing like 10k USD and not having access to the banking system i didn't have much choice)
@Atatra but yeah i don't think these people want you to 'marry for love'
@whitequark i am so sorry you had to go through that, hopefully things get a bit easier for all of us
@Atatra i decided to trust people a lot less and negotiate a lot more ruthlessly and now i'm at least no longer broke
Samantaz Fox@whitequark That's crazy O.o
For anyone on the continent, across the channel, this is 3707 €, or about that much minimum wage:
Tom Hayward@whitequark that's ridiculous.
I fear that's the point 😔🥲
I fear that's the point 😔🥲