Your link didn't work -- but the one off the Home Office web page (http://www.ind.homeoffice.gov.uk/) did.
I am appalled. I've written the following letter to the BBC's Have Your Say, and will cc to my MP. I suggest others write similar.
The problem is: they can do what they like to immigrants -- because how many of us are going to raise our head above the parapet and risk getting shipped off elsewhere? They've got us by the short and curlies and they know it.
But you've got to draw a line somewhere, and I've been playing by the rules now for years, and rewarded with continual slaps in the face everytime they make it harder and harder to stay -- and I've had quite enough now.
But I rant ... sorry ... here's my letter.
----------------
From: William Ingle-Gillis
Assistant Curate, Rectorial Benefice of Caldicot (Gwent)
Social Responsibility Officer, (Anglican) Diocese of Monmouth
Dear BBC --
Amongst the various items slipped into John Reid's immigration announcements
yesterday were new application fees for immigration and nationality
applications, effective from April 2007. In many instances, fees have
doubled and more.
In the course of the next year, I shall be applying for British citizenship
and my wife will apply for Indefinite Leave to Remain (permanent residence).
We are the parents of two British children already. For us, these new fees
will come to £1325, around two-hundred pounds more than a full month's wages
for me as an Anglican clergyman in Wales-- and I suspect that I'm one of the
lucky ones.
When unveiling these new fees, the Government were keen to give lip-service to
the value of migration to British economy and culture and, in their
words, 'were clear that any changes to the way in which we charge migrant
workers and students who come to the UK must not adversely impact on the many
benefits that legal migration brings'. But, frankly, I fail to see how the
most expensive of the new fees will do anything but bring financial hardship
to my family -- including its British members.
For my own part, I have paid faithfully into the system during the last 11
years through extortionate foreign-student tuition fees to British
universities, regular renewal of my visa, maintenance of my family usually on
a single earner's wage with no recourse to public funding, and of course
British taxes. (No one ever seems to notice that the phrase 'the British
taxpayer' also refers to immigrants.)
As for what I give to British life; I wake up at 4.00 and work a 12- or
14-hour day, lately with no day off. As a parish priest, I welcome British
children into the world through baptism, provide comfort for the sick and
dying and homebound, educate British children for free through
curriculum-required religious assemblies, preside over the marriages that any
British couple has a legal right to demand of my Church, and provide funerals
almost exclusively to non-Church-goers who need to see their relatives off in
a dignified manner. I attend public meetings as a representative public
figure. And, naturally, I lead public worship in -- in my case -- three
Welsh villages. Moreover, in a secondary role as Social Responsibility
Officer for the Diocese of Monmouth, it is my particular remit to help
develop the Church's strategy and direct Church monies towards caring for the
poor, ill, elderly, and homeless in British society -- irrespective of
whether they have any prior association with the Church, but simply for the
well-being of society.
The Home Office suggests that these fees should teach me and other migrants
to 'value' what we're getting in return -- getting, that is, if our
applications are successful. (The fees are not, of course, refundable,
should an application fail.) They suggest that 'those who benefit most from
coming to the UK should contribute most to funding the end to end system'.
But I would like to ask Mr. Reid: apart from a token word or two before the
shoe falls, how am I actually valued by this system? How is my contribution
recognised? From where I sit, it merely adds insult to charge more than a
month's wages to someone who has worked very hard for more than a decade to
fit into British society and contribute spiritually, morally, and monetarily.
I certainly see no interest from the Home Office in what I bring to British
society -- but only an interest, driven by institutional fear, in setting a
bar so high that only a handful can jump it. It is a statement, in the
clearest possible terms, that in a post 9-11 world, a government desperate
about its prospects at the next election wants me to know that 'we do not
welcome your kind here'.
In the end, of course I will pay these fees; what choice do I have?! My whole
life is here now; I have nothing to return to elsewhere. And I will not go
into debt to make good what I now shall owe. But -- make no mistake --
taking food off my British children's table will not make me value my
citizenship application more. It will simply be punishing. And I am one of
the lucky ones.
How many more hard working, honest-dealing immigrants will find themselves
forced to go into debt, go underground, or simply go away?
Yours sincerely,
William Ingle-Gillis
