Jacqui Smith's immigration policy change on high-skilled migrant workers

This is a comment that I posted to somebody's blog discussing Jacqui Smith's new immigration rules.

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Great post! You’ve said everything that we non-EU immigrants feel.

My husband and I are immigrant too. We were born and raised in China, and have lived in the UK since 2000. Our two children were born in UK.

We both have PhD degrees. I did my Master and PhD in UK and worked here since. We bought home here. We have paid income tax, NI contribution, council tax… but don’t have access to public funds. My children born in UK don’t get child benefits.

Yet we still haven’t got indefinite leave to remain. Every now and then we have to pay a fortune to extend our visa and be ‘humiliated’ by Home Office if we went there in person trying to get the visa on the same day.

Once I posted my application with passports to Home Office and waited for 6 months. When my passport was returned I found that I was only granted 6 months Leave to remain, which means by the time I received my passport, my visa would expire again soon and I have to post it to Home Office for another extension!

I absolutely agree your comments that we are a cash-cow for a cash-greedy government.

Under UK’s very selective immigration system, non-EU migrant workers are likely to be top-of-the-cream in other countries. As a result, UK has already taken great advantage by luring the top people to contribute in its economy.

We spent the best ten years in our life (20s-30s) in UK. Our children speak perfect English that you can’t tell from local kids. Yet, we’re still not qualified for indefinite leave to remain. UK government has changed its immigration policy too often and broken its promises to immigrants again and again.

Now again, Jacqui Smith’s change aims to hard-working highly-skilled immigrant workers who contribute to the society but not effect illegal immigrants, assylum seekers, EU Immigrants, or terrorists at all.

This country is becoming greedy and hostile to hard-working high-skilled immigrants.

When it comes ‘the straw that broke the camel’s back’, we are seriously consider leaving though it might be difficult for our English-speaking children.