UK Immigration: Britons Want 'Drastic Action' To Reduce Immigration

I think I read somewhere that the EEA permit was free but if you wanted your non EEA spouse to work, you filled out another form which costs £59.

Not quite. The non-EEA spouse automatically has the right to work in the UK anyway.

The EEA family permit is free and allows you to work (you have the right to work anyway, but the permit is just confirmation of that right). However, it is only valid for entry to the UK and is only valid for 6 months, so you have to apply for another visa anyway, whether you are planning to work or not.

The 5-year EEA Residence card is what you apply for after you arrive in the UK on the EEA Family Permit, before the 6 months are up. You can work before you apply for it and during the processing time (which can be 6 months). It used to be free of charge, but they introduced a fee of £55 on 1st July 2013.

After 5 years on the EEA Residence Card you can apply for confirmation of permanent residence. This also used to be free, but they introduced a fee of £55 on 1st July 2013.

So, what used to be a completely free process all the way up to citizenship permanent residence now costs £110.

Ahhh ksands to my rescue again =0)  I knew it was ridiculously cheap.....and here I...well most of us....paying thousands of pounds to become citizens....

Ahhh ksands to my rescue again =0)  I knew it was ridiculously cheap.....and here I...well most of us....paying thousands of pounds to become citizens....

Well, everyone has to pay for citizenship - even EEA citizens and their family members.

I should have phrased it slightly differently in my post. The process up to, but not including citizenship, is £110. Then citizenship is £874 on top of that.

I knew what you meant =0)

Excellent news. Glad I came before that surcharge for the Residence Card.

If we had moved to Iceland, we would have had to go through a lot more hoops including minimum income and additional fees, though they are still not as onerous as the UK. So it's not just the UK that's making life difficult for mixed nationality couples.   

Listen, the 1%, or as I like to think of it, the 5%, they love when we turn on one another. Poor students gnashing their teeth at poor old people. Working class folk against working class. Single mothers shamed. They play us like a cheap fiddle. I have more sympathy for a junkie in the gutter than some vile financial analyst who manipulates data to rob people of their pensions and then claim to be too big to fail. The junkie may be a failure, but this other guy is cold blooded and self-aware.

THIS!  This is the single most important thing that people need to understand.

Yes, it can be really hard to remember, especially when you're being faced with some idiot who seems to have stepped off a tabloid cover.  But the truth is that for every one idiot, there are 9 other people on various benefits that you never know about, because they're too busy struggling to get by, instead of posting Facebook updates of their new iPhone, etc.

To paraphrase, I'd rather pay for 99 families to be lavish, greedy and irresponsible, than see one family going homeless, hungry, cold, ill or otherwise deprived of a decent, basic living standard.

I have more sympathy for a junkie in the gutter than some vile financial analyst who manipulates data to rob people of their pensions and then claim to be too big to fail. The junkie may be a failure, but this other guy is cold blooded and self-aware.

I am surprised by all the support for this statement.  One thing I have noticed here that I never experienced in America is an acceptance for some kind prejudice (for lack of a better word) against wealthy/upper class individuals. Toff-bashing, if you will.

Your statement implies that you assume a financial analyst is vile and sets out to "rob" people.  Just because people are wealthy, whether by circumstance or as a result of a lifetime of hard work, it doesn't make them bad people. And it certainly doesn't mean that they owe any of their riches to "junkies in the gutter".  Making money is not one of life's evils and I don't understand why its seen as something that people are often made to feel ashamed of in this country.

Making money is not one of life's evils and I don't understand why its seen as something that people are often made to feel ashamed of in this country.

I agree completely. Reverse snobbery is just as bad as snobbery.

Well, to be fair, sonofasailor didn't say rich people in general or even financial analysts in general, he was talking about someone specific in the financial sector doing completely unethical (should be illegal) stuff to the detriment of others. I mean, they do exist.

I'd say there's a difference between someone who worked hard for their money in a legitimate way and those that have put the economy in the crapper and should probably be in prison, and I think sonofasailor also managed to make that distinction.

I would add that the people who have huge amounts of money, whether through work or luck of birth, and only use that privilege and power to give themselves more privilege and power rather than contributing to the improvement of society, are worthy of nothing but contempt for their greed and corruption. Not all rich people are like that, but there's a saying that the rich don't get (or stay) rich by being generous. If more of the City fatcats were acting like Warren Buffet and giving loads of it away I would find it easier to feel some sympathy for them.

No big surprise that you never heard that in America; the Puritans thought wealth was a sign of god's approval, and this prosperity gospel carries on to this day. Plus, of course, the myth of the American dream means that there's an assumption that rich people got that way through their own efforts while poor people only have themselves to blame. Despite the last 30-odd years of Thatcherism, there are still some vestiges of socialism around these islands. But hey mirrajay, Boris Johnson agrees with you! http://www.politics.co.uk/news/2013/11/18/boris-johnson-super-rich-an-oppressed-minority-like-homeless

No big surprise that you never heard that in America; the Puritans thought wealth was a sign of god's approval, and prosperity gospel is very popular

Thanks for the Weber!

We are actually beginning to see a few criminalish court cases regarding the actions of financiers leading up to the crash - because what they did was not only immoral and plain foolish it was criminal.

Again, rebranding junk loans AAA is fraud. Many, many many...if not most....if not all knew this: the guys who packaged this crap together with other instruments (like some poor scmhoe's pension) and peddled them around the globe, the City guys who bought the crap, the rating agencies who gave them solid ratings (the same ones who will black mark you in a second if you are behind half a month on rent) and the big international accounting agencies whose jobs are to audit these institutions and insure laws are adhered to.

Rigging LIBOR (interest rates) is illegal. Manipulating foreign currency rates is illegal.

These aren't hard-working honest people selling quality goods and services.

 

"RBS is facing calls for an investigation into controversial practices by its turnaround unit following allegations that good companies have been forced out of business for the taxpayer-backed lender’s profit."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/10471671/Royal-Bank-of-Scotland-faces-claims-of-killing-off-small-firms.html

It gets better and better. We bailed these guys out, by-the-way.