Stupid Immigrants !!

[Crystal_sword]

Ok, i admit there is an Immigration Problem.. But come on!

Pensioner in deportation threat

An 80-year-old woman who moved to Scotland from America in 1929 has been told she could be deported as an illegal immigrant.

Marguerite Grimmond was born in Detroit but moved to Arbroath with her Scottish mother when she was two.

At the beginning of May she left Scotland for the first time for a holiday in Australia.

But when she returned, officials said her American passport was not valid and that she could not stay in the country.

The immigration officers said Mrs Grimmond, who had never applied for British citizenship, should have had her passport stamped by the Home Office before she set off on her holiday

...

She said: "I've been an illegal immigrant, would you believe, but I've paid taxes and done all the things I ought to do.

"My mother was Scottish, I married a Scottish policeman, my children were all born in Scotland so I assumed I was a Scot too. I wasn't aware that I wasn't a British citizen.

"I have five days left until I could be tossed out of the country. I'm not terribly pleased about that.

"I don't know anyone in America. I would just be fair lost, to put it mildly, but I really don't think there's any more I can do. I don't think it will happen but I'm just leaving it in the lap of the gods."

'Commendable efficiency'

When Mrs Grimmond decided to take her first ever foreign holiday, she went to the American consulate and paid £70 for her passport.

She claimed that no-one mentioned that she would need to get the passport stamped by the Home Office, and was able to travel freely from Heathrow Airport to Sydney on 1 May.

She added: "I arrived back at Heathrow at the end of the holiday to be told by an official that I couldn't stay in the country because I didn't have the Home Office stamp.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/tay ... 756341.stm

[XOR]

You cannot escape immigration with petty excuses like that.

[guythp]

Well, that's the scots for you!

[Kronos]

Ooops

[Kon-Tiki]

She's got a right to get all the taxes she's paid back then, surely? I mean, if she's not legally there, then she sure shouldn't have gotten tax letters

[Dr Morbeus]

She's got a right to get all the taxes she's paid back then, surely? I mean, if she's not legally there, then she sure shouldn't have gotten tax letters

I think you'll find that tax residency and citizenship rules are two completely separate things. If you earn money in the UK you are taxed on it, regardless of whether you are a citizen or not.

[teamonkey]

That sounds right, even if it's not "fair". She's not a UK citizen by rights and she didn't lawfully immigrate (she moved pre-war when the rules were different). She never left the UK until she went on holiday. When she tried to get back into the country they found she didn't have the legal right to enter and stay here, so she has to immigrate or go back to the place where she is a citizen. If she hadn't have left the UK there wouldn't be a problem, and she's now applied for immigration and there's no reason why she won't be accepted.

Problem lads?

[Kon-Tiki]

Have you seen what those that apply for immigration have to know in the UK?

[Orava]

I hope Scotland joins the EU one of these days.

I've had the inverse battle with the Finnish authorities, I got a letter from them a couple of years ago (sent to my UK address) stating that as I did not seem to have any valid means of income, I surely must be earning my money illegally and that their top-notch people would be investigating my illegal activities. I had to write a letter to them pointing out that I actually hadn't lived in the country for the last 12 years or so.

I am pretty sure this will happen again, as I have recently moved in the UK and have written to the Finnish authorities to indicate this, as I have to under the Finnish law (until I am 60; because of the conscription system). In Finland it is illegal for the government not to know where you live. So the tax people will be on my track again pretty soon I am sure - where have you been... and so it goes again.

Gah.

[PFVA]

Was there an immigraation law at the time she moved into the UK. If there wasn't she didn't do anything ilegal.

There was similar cases in the USA of people who had come in before the INS was created - 1930s sometime - and those people were given a special legal status not to be bothered and also the choice of becoming U.S. Citizens.

I remember meeting a German woman who had immigrated with her parents to Mexico after World War I, then crossing the board into California around 1920, she was a widow of a US Citizen she had eventually married, she just had never done any paperwork.

[SilverBrumby]

Much the same thing happened to one of my cousins. Her parents brought her
out to Australia when she was a couple of months old, applied for residency
for the whole family after staying here for a bit, but somehow she got left
off the forms because she was too young.
When she was 19 (about 3-4 years ago), she went over to England to see
her relatives. When her plane stopped over at Singapore on the way back,
Quantas wouldn't let her back on because she didn't have a visa to enter
Australia.
It was fairly bizarre, she'd managed to get an Australian passport, but
legally she turned out to be a British citizen. She spent a week in Singapore,
(two days in the airport, before Singapore immigration let her move to a
hotel on the condition that she didn't leave the building.) then she got a
temporary visa issued to let her visit her family.
Finally, she managed to get Australian citizenship, and the whole thing
was dropped.

[kalmar]

So the tax people will be on my track again pretty soon I am sure - where have you been... and so it goes again.

Haha, I still have an outstanding tax bill owed to Finland. It's only a few thousand FIM but I suspect I can't go back there without paying it