Our beloved leader allows refugees to stay and become citizens, illegal immigrants to become citizens and opens the floodgates for almost every third world country to just walk in and stay.

While this happens, we are charged extortionate amounts for the legitimate reasons for bringing in someone from overseas.

Find a foreign bride and try to bring her over to get married and live a happy life. While you can go anywhere in the world and get married on a tourist visa, the UK requires that you pay £500 for a special visa to get married here. This is no more than a standard tourist visa but with the ability to get married here, nothing else is different between a tourist visa and a marriage visa.

Once married, you have to pay a further £600 for the 2 year visa which allows her to stay here married to you for 2 years. If you are both still married after that time, she must then take a "living in the UK" test. This comes with a nominal fee but contains questions that even a person who was born here probably wouldn't know the answers to. After that, a further cost for the final citizenship.

Often, getting the visas to begin with are extremely hard. Failure rates are high and there's no refund of the costs. You have to prove that you have the finances to keep your partner, even though it would cost no more than it would to have a wife who was born in this country.

My friend has recently spent nearly 3K just to get his girlfriend over here to get married. Since she has no access to state funds and such, he faces a large bill if she should become ill and require a doctor or hospitalisation or even if they have a child. He must keep her while she is out of work as she cannot claim any benefits until she gains full citizenship. Along with the costs he still faces, this is going to be a long hard road for him.

While he has a legitimate reason for bringing her here, illegal immigrants and refugees who are not even supposed to be here are offered free accommodation (fully furnished with washing machines, dishwashers and loads of other white goods), all the benefits to live on and even allowed to work here as well as free medical treatment.

Note: Refugees are legally only supposed to go to across the border to the next country to get aid and refugee status. Most of them here have gone through several countries to get here. In addition, an illegal immigrant in any other country would be deported and refused entry ever again, even with a legitimate visa, there are a few who will have you shot if you come back.

Food for thought: bring her over on a tourist visa, let her stay with you as an illegal immigrant and then marry her when she gains citizenship. It will be far cheaper.

Your points are extremely pertinent Tryst; there is a difference between an asylum seeker and a refugee and don't they know it too! nearly every Ivan tom and Ahbdul claim asylum as soon as they reach here! This opens the benefits floodgates! A question was once asked of my Local Council! "How much of the councils revenue for housing benefits goes to immigrants to the UK"? the answer given was literally "less than 1% of social housing goes to immigrants"! not answering the question at all! It would be interesting to ask the DWP how much of their revenue goes to non UK born people! Do it under FOI and they have to answer you!

Asfor your friend perhaps he should find a good Human Rights Lawyer!
_________________
This guy is liscensed to chill, and thrill, but the opportunities to thrill are rather less than anticipated!!!!

I actually don't think it's human rights that should be involved here. The church has as much say as anyone else, you have the right who and where you wish and no government has the right to force you to pay extra just because it happens to be someone from overseas. This is the only country in the world as far as I know that requires an extortionate amount for a special visa, all others will allow it on a standard tourist visa. Also, a human rights lawyer would cost far more than the money he has paid so far and this sort of case would go on for years in an attempt to financially cripple him and force him to stop. I am sure if the Vatican got involved, they would be far more likely to financially cripple the UK gov't first.

As for FOI, we all know how politicians can lie or avoid real answers and strangle statistical data to show whatever they want. There's no doubt they would just do all that to show there's nothing out of the ordinary. Unless there is an independent body examining the data, we will never get the real figures.

This is where I feel we should have an independent body examining the books. Keeping tabs on government spending, investments and such to assure the people that the government is not just wasting or pocketing it. The problem is, how long before they become just as corrupt? We're back to the quandary of who polices the police?

Could he have moved to her country if it would have been easier? or what about if they both moved to a country which was easier to go through that process in together? I am not saying it is right that it should be so difficult and expensive to bring a partner into this country from another but at the same time, the rules are there for a reason.

I am sure I heard it was easier if you worked in a desireable skilled proffession, and so were highly employable to the UK market, is that the case?

Up until about 4 years ago I worked in asylum casework for the home office so I know all the tricks people use to enter the country. A common one is they paid a man to get them out of their country and they stayed in a van or boat until the man told them they were at their destination, but the asylum seeker did not know what the destination was LOL. But there are many geniune asylum seekers too, its just that they dont claim asylum at their nearest available country.

To be honest we should probably start to only accept asylum seekers from neighbouring countries. If someone arrives from China perhaps he or she should be refused entry on the grounds that this is not their nearest country for asylum. Although thaqt is already grounds for somebodys case to be refused, after months of them living here waiting for a decision. I mean they should be refused access to the country completely if they did not claim asylum at their nearest safe haven country.

That may be harsh, and I don't know if it would work but this country has become the promised land for asylum seekers. They travel over huge continents to get here so that they can get the free money and housing but at the same time I ask myself, if I was in their position, would I do the same? My answer is probably yes. On the one hand you want to help people in danger and on the other you want to rid the country of the huge financial burden of bogus claimants.

Moving to another country is fine if the country isn't a third world country to begin with. His gf came from Philippines and I spent a month over there myself recently. Unless you have a really high profile job, you are on minimum wage and that's tough to live on, even for someone who was born there.

Whole families of several generations live and sleep together in small rooms and all work because that's the only way to survive. His gf, their daughter and his gf's mother all slept in the same bed. She wasn't even pregnant before he tried to get the visa for her the first time but with his frequent trips over there, the inevitable happened while she stayed with him at his rented apartment.

Oh, that 3K doesn't include his trips over there to stay with her by the way. Also, if he married her over there and wanted to bring her back, he would have faced an even more difficult task to get the 2 year stay visa and at 600 pounds a try, failures would be even more costly.

As for asylum seekers, I feel that a more tough approach should be adopted and they should be turned away to seek asylum where they are supposed to and not wherever they choose to.

How long before the more corrupt countries deliberately start internal conflict in order to dump all their undesirables that they can't convict legally onto us? We have a big enough criminal element here without taking on more from around the world. It's time we did what NZ did for years and close our borders. Start a business and create jobs, that's fine. If you come here from the EU and can't support yourself, tough, go home. If you're seeking asylum and don't come from a neighboring country, stay on the boat and go back to France.

I have friends from Holland, Sweden and Finland who are astounded at how we Brits let our government walk all over us. They have all said that there would be anarchy in their countries if their governments did it to them, riots, civil unrest and their governments would be ousted. They have all spent time over here at Uni so they know what goes on, it's not just what they've heard. The Dutch guy, I worked with in Aberdeen during the summer holidays and he went back to Holland a month ago.

I think you will find that Castro dumped loads of undesirables on the States! Not a new idea! It's obviously happening in Africa now!

Perhaps this is where the UN could be useful! There must be guidance notes for Govts to use and with the Internet they must in some part be available to the seekers! It's probably that in the UK everything is handed to them on a plate! including a wad of cash each week that represents months of income at home for them!

I would suggest that asylum should be an adjoining safe country!
_________________
This guy is liscensed to chill, and thrill, but the opportunities to thrill are rather less than anticipated!!!!