Support Ahad and Anum

https://twitter.com/RefugeeAction tweets :
Just read about the @EastonCowboys cricket team's campaign to stop their teammate being deported. Support them here: http://bit.ly/1nTFJGH

The Easton Cowboys page:  http://eastoncowboys.org.uk/support-ahad-and-anum-rizvi/ 

'We are campaigning to stop one of our cricket players Syed Ahad Rizvi and his family being ‘removed’ from the country. The family are seeking asylum after their extended family and community in Pakistan were  threatened by the militant groups Sipah-e-Sahaba and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi which are linked with the Taliban.

'Ahad and Anum were being held at immigration removal centres, however they have now been released back to their family while the they fight to get their asylum claims to a judicial review.

'The family’s lawyer has summarised the case:

'Some of you may have heard of the predicament of one of our players, Ahad Rizvi. Ahad’s father came to the UK lawfully. He was then lawfully joined by Ahad and the rest of his family from Pakistan where they are a minority. Their extended family has suffered kidnapping, torture and murder and they have suffered threats, harassment and attempted kidnapping. Several months after the arrival in the UK they received information that made their return to Pakistan extremely dangerous. They did not overstay their visa or simply abscond as many people do. They went to solicitors and made a proper application for asylum in the UK. Unfortunately, the family has been let down on a number of fronts and all of their legal avenues have been exhausted. They have no family in Pakistan. Their extended family has long since left and are in Canada, the US, Dubai and Iran. Law and order in Pakistan are fragile and victims receive very little protection if at all...'

Sign the petition :
https://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/theresa-may-stop-the-deportation-of-easton-cowboys-cricketer-ahad-rizvi-and-his-sister-anum-rizvi-return-them-to-their-family-in-fishponds-bristol

Stop the deportation of Easton Cowboys Cricketer Ahad Rizvi and his sister Anum Rizvi. Return them to their family in Fishponds Bristol.

Support the Facebook page :
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Support-Ahad-and-Anum/1484706438409036

'Bristol cricket team Easton Cowboys help Ahad and Anum Rizvi win asylum battle' :
http://www.bristolpost.co.uk/Bristol-cricket-team-Easton-Cowboys-help-siblings/story-21123608-detail/story.html

'Cricket Club continues fight to keep teens in country' :
http://www.itv.com/news/west/update/2014-05-21/cricket-club-continues-fight-to-keep-teens-in-country/

Kuljeet

“I moved here with the expectation that come age 65, my mother would be able to move here with me.”

Kuljeet is a British citizen who has been living in the UK for 13 years. He was handpicked from India to work in the UK design centre as a Digital Electronics Engineer.

Kuljeet’s wife is also a British citizen and she has been working for the NHS as a doctor for 10 years.

Kuljeet was raised by his mother, a single parent and teacher, in India, following her divorce from his dad.

Kuljeet has been aware that he will need to look after his mum; although in a reasonably good state of health at the moment, she is getting older and family bonds mean living in separate countries is not feasible.

The UK seemed ideal to settle in, as it allowed for his to sponsor his mother to have her reside with him in the UK, once she reached the age of 65. Indeed, were it not for this, Kuljeet would have not made a life here, nor opted to become a British citizen.

There was a very clear legitimate expectation set that come time, Kuljeet would be able to fulfil his duties to his parent.

However, changes to UK’s immigration rules have meant that the route for adult dependants is closed, leaving Kuljeet in a very difficult position. Does he leave the UK or let his mother face the hardship of old age on her own?

The latter is not an option. It does not foster the kind of values Kuljeet wants to impart on his two daughters. Daughters who are proud to be British – it’s how they identify themselves, with the UK being the only home they know. Daughters who would be denied the right to a British education, British upbringing and would be forced to leave all that is familiar to them if Kuljeet were to be forced to leave the UK – just to look after his mum. Uprooting them is not something Kuljeet wants to do.

Both the daughters are very attached to their grandmother, who has visited the UK several times. They don’t understand why their grandma is living alone in India – when she could be here with their family.

Kuljeet does not think they are old enough to be told about the government’s rules.

For this family, the rules do not make sense and they feel like they are being punished for having a parent from overseas; for being migrants, albeit British citizens, themselves. Neither Kuljeet nor his wife have ever claimed any benefits – they are both higher rate tax payers and have been so for years. His mother would have no recourse to public funds. How could she be a burden on the state? Indeed, his mother is more likely to get involved in charitable work and keep herself active by helping other people.

More stories about elderly dependants : http://britcits.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/elderly%20dependants

Down the memory hole

Spotted on Facebook :

Interesting change to the UKBA's policy and guidance section concerning EEA Family Permits (EUN 2.14). The text stating that it does not matter if the only reason a British national goes to another member state is to exercise an economic Treaty right so that they can come back to the UK with their family members has been removed!

I took a screenshot of the website before the change.

For future reference, it is here, along with the relevant text : http://britcits.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/for-future-reference-ukba-on-surinder.html

The text included this sentence :
It does not matter if the only reason the British national went to another Member State was to exercise an economic Treaty right was so that he / she could come back to the UK with his / her family members under EC law.

It doesn't any more. This is a fairly obvious attempt to limit knowledge of the Surinder Singh/EEA route which provides a way for British people to be with their non-EEA family members. Devious

As I said at the time -
For future reference, in case the website ever 'changes' in the future. Taken 30/Jun/2013.
---

From the Newsnight piece on Surinder Singh a few weeks ago : http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-23029195 

The Immigration Minister Mark Harper declined to be interviewed for BBC Asian Network/Newsnight's report and instead issued a statement:
"The EEA family permit is not a 'loophole'. It reflects the current requirements of EU law and would not apply if someone went abroad to a member state for a short time just in order to circumvent the immigration rules. An application will be refused if it cannot be proved the British citizen was genuinely engaged in employment."
This somewhat contradicts the UKBA website which says that it does not matter if the only reason a British national goes to another member state is to exercise an economic Treaty right so that they can come back to the UK with their family members. 

Quite clearly, the website was right on Surinder Singh. Are the changes to the website related to the Newsnight piece?
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Update :

A screenshot of the current wording on the UKBA website (31 July 2013) is below. You can compare with the screenshot above to see the difference.




Source :
http://www.ukba.homeoffice.gov.uk/policyandlaw/guidance/ecg/eun/eun2/#header14

Shared in the interests of fair use and the historical record.

Fathers' Day

Spotted on Facebook :

I wonder if David Lammy and the Right Wing think tank complaining of "man deserts" will stand up for divided families? Not all absent Dads choose to be absent! Too right!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/15/families-need-fathers-david-lammy

Skype Daddy : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKrCUaKB4KM

Stories of divided families : http://britcits.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/stories

Here are some fathers and children who are suffering or have suffered because of the anti-family immigration rules :

'... Once I’m gone, that possibility leaves with me, but however much resentment I feel towards this land, there will always be something of me that remains behind and can never be fully sundered from the island of its birth. That “thing” is a person. A beautiful little person by the name of Holly Rowan. You will never be far from my thoughts. I may have left you, but you will never leave me.'
- http://britcits.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/les

Valentine's Day : http://britcits.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/valentines-day-part-ii-one-of-britcits.html
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Citizenship test has become a bad pub quiz, says academic.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2013/jun/14/citizenship-test-pub-quiz

But it is required that new citizens know "trivial" facts such as the year Emperor Claudius invaded Britain, the year that Sake Dean Mahomet launched the first curry house in the country and the age of Big Ben.

Brooks, a US immigrant who sat and passed the test in Newcastle-upon-Tyne in 2009, becoming a British citizen in 2011, said the test is a key part of immigration policy but is unfit for purpose in its current form.

"The Life In The UK test has become a bad pub quiz. It has gone from testing practical trivia to the purely trivial and is a major opportunity lost," he said.

"The biggest surprise is the lack of attention successive governments have paid to ensuring the test is fair and not out of date, a surprise even bigger than the sometimes-shocking questions that can be found on the test," said Brooks, a reader in law at Durham Law School.

Previously : The Life in UK book's blatant Sutton Hoo error :
http://britcits.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/error-in-life-in-uk-book-image-below-is.html

(The helmet captioned as 'Sutton Hoo' in the LiUK book is in fact the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendel helmet. Fail! ).

Similar but not the same :

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Family migration? Not if you're poor.

http://podacademy.org/2013/uncategorized/immigration/ 

Actually, my crime isn’t marrying a foreigner – it’s being poor and marrying a foreigner that really gets their goat. After all, the government hasn’t been completely unreasonable; as long as you have £65,000 in cash savings in a bank account, you’re fine. Alternatively, as long as you have investments and the revenue from them equals the magical £18,600, then you’re covered. So, I’m not completely buggered; all I need is £65,000 for six months (and the willpower not to spend any of it) or £465,000 to invest, as that will earn me £18,600 at an interest rate of 4%. There is no leeway where the figures are concerned: they have to be spot on. One of the examples of the severity of this rule that’s currently circulating the net is of a British woman who has spent nine and a half years years in the armed forces and is, per month, £17 short of the government’s target, and thus, is unable to live in the UK with her spouse.
---

https://twitter.com/BritCits :
McPassport .. what a brilliant idea from @McDonalds to build on EU togetherness http://www.yourtalentmcd.eu
---

Come to Britain unprepared and you risk becoming a victim of violence, Polish migrants warned.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/10120641/Come-to-Britain-unprepared-and-you-risk-becoming-a-victim-of-violence-Polish-migrants-warned.html
---

https://twitter.com/SalCardiff :
cat in skip = national outrage. Child separated from parents by uk immigration = sorry we're full. UK is shut!

Below the radar

To add to our cache of primary documents, I've uploaded an important piece from Hansard,19th June 2012 :

http://www.scribd.com/doc/137090720/Hansard-19Jun2012


(Mirrored from :
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmhansrd/cm120619/debtext/120619-0001.htm#12061972000001
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmhansrd/cm120619/debtext/120619-0002.htm
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmhansrd/cm120619/debtext/120619-0003.htm
)

Note that this is the so-called 'debate' on the approach to immigration rules prior to the 9th July 2012 rule changes. Note that the discussion is faily abstract - no mention of a specific income threshold, language requirements, time to ILR, effect on elderly dependants, rules which exclude half the population of the UK from bringing in a spouse, children etc. This is not a proper 'debate' in the true sense - especially as it is headlined under 'European Convention on Human Rights' and NOT family immigration rules, or similar! Basically, this is a way to go 'under the radar'.

As John McDonnell says, ' Will the right hon. Lady clarify whether we are legislating today? Are we passing into law the rules that she published less than a week ago?'

Our view is very much that this was a back-door way of introducing rules which has had such a devastating effect on divided families ( such as those here : http://britcits.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/stories ).

We believe that this is a fundamentally undemocratic and dishonest way to introduce rules which have had such an appalling impact on many people.

From our introduction - http://britcits.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/introduction.html :
On 9th July 2012, new immigration rules were introduced in the UK which affect a large number of British people with overseas family (spouses, children, and dependant parents). The rules will affect more and more people as time goes on. The rules were introduced by the 'back door' - first secondary legislation, and then (when the courts ruled against this - the 'Alvi' decision), emergency legislation was pushed through the House of Lords (as the Commons was in recess) without a proper debate.

What happened next :
http://www.freemovement.org.uk/2012/07/18/analysis-of-alvi/
http://www.freemovement.org.uk/2012/07/19/new-immigration-rules-brought-in-immediately/

More primary documents and correspondence :
http://www.scribd.com/sjplep/documents

Error in 'Life in UK' book??

The image below is from page 18 of the new 'Life in the UK' book :

 The caption reads 'An Anglo-Saxon helmet found at Sutton Hoo - currently at the British Museum'.

The text begins: 'The Anglo-Saxons were not Christians when they first came to Britain but, during this period, missionaries came to Britain to preach about Christianity...'

Au contraire. The famous Sutton Hoo helmet is this :

(Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Sutton_hoo_helmet_room_1_no_flashbrightness_ajusted.JPG - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sutton_Hoo ).

It's not the same helmet as the one in the 'Life in the UK' book - and in all my googling, I haven't come across a helmet found at Sutton Hoo which looks like the helmet in the 'Life in the UK' book.

For starters, the Sutton Hoo helmet has a full face mask; the 'Life in the UK' book's helmet doesn't.

I believe that the helmet in the 'Life in the UK' image is actually a Vendel helmet - maybe even this helmet :

(Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Helmet_from_a_7th_century_boat_grave,_Vendel_era.jpg )

In fact, the image of the Vendel helmet above is linked to from the Wikipedia page on Sutton Hoo ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sutton_Hoo ) with the caption 'Helmet from the 7th century ship burial at Vendel'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vendel is a location in Sweden which is also the site of ship burials and the graves of medieval kings who shared a similar culture to the early English - but it's not Sutton Hoo, and while the famous Sutton Hoo helmet does bear some resemblance to the Vendel helmet, they aren't the same object.

Surely the authors of the 'Life in the UK' book haven't just copied and pasted an image from Wikipedia (or somewhere) without understanding the underlying context or history? Because that would be wrong.

If of course the helmet in the 'Life in the UK' book does come from Sutton Hoo (another helmet??) - I'd like to see evidence of this, and am willing to be corrected. But on the face of it it's not the same object. 

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"The new book rightly focuses on values and principles at the heart of being British," Harper said. "Instead of telling people how to claim benefits it encourages participation in British life."

Among these British values are 1/ fair play 2/ accuracy and integrity and 3/ a sense of history.

If indeed the authors of the book have posted the wrong image (the Vendel helmet, while lovely and demonstrating a high level of craftsmanship, isn't the same as the Sutton Hoo helmet), then that's just not cricket.

The Sutton Hoo helmet is remarkable for its sheer attention to detail. From http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_objects/pe_mla/h/helmet_from_sutton_hoo.aspx :
The helmet has panels decorated with interlacing Style II animal ornament and heroic scenes, motifs that were common in the Germanic world at this time. One scene shows two warriors, wearing horned helmets, holding short swords and down-turned spears. The other shows a mounted warrior trampling a fallen enemy, who in turn is stabbing the horse, a theme handed down from the Roman Empire.

Yes. Attention to detail. More attention to detail please!

Sutton Hoo is a special part of English history - sacred even. It's just not on to get something so core to the English identity, wrong.
---

I should also add that the apparent error wasn't spotted by me. It was spotted by someone I know who is
1/ Currently studying for the 'Life in the UK' test
2/ From a radically different culture (Japan) and...
3/ Whose native language isn't English.

Fair play.

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Related post : http://britcits.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/hidden-lives-life-in-uk-comedy-gold.html