Quite good so far, even with Death’s Head’s tusks being disappointingly small.

So, cheers Kieron. Got me into a comic store for the first time in months, and I’m quite pleased with my purchase, even at four bucks.

My partner – if anyone hadn’t already guessed – was about ready to apply for a visa extension earlier this year, but without prior warning and the same week we were about to send off the papers the home office not only stopped giving out those visas, but basically said to us my partner would have to find work and apply for a tier 2 work permit.Within two weeks of her current visa expiring.

She is also from a country that isn’t within the “European Economic Area”, which means even if she visits she cannot do so for more than six months at a time, and she can’t just come and work over here if she wants to. Oh, and she wants to be a doctor here, not some petty labourer.

This is the kind of shit we have to deal with, and it’s intolerable.

My uncle is as nice a bloke as you’d ever meet, but he HAS to follow the rules to the letter, he can’t make exceptions no matter the case, or how sorry he feels for people. He’s not allowed.

It’s a rigid and massive system and for good reason, because there are thousands of people who try and abuse that system every month.
Immigration is often one of British people’s favourite bitching subjects; either for letting all those foreigners in fist shaking at a system that’s too soft and not hard enough, or tutting at how broken and cruel the system is to nice people.

Frankly the system is one of the best, and probably fairest in the world – if a little too heavy on the bureaucracy (but then isn’t everything – we are after all a nation of middle-men) – but it’s still under massive pressure from all sides.
Still slated as rubbish, by all sides, for all reasons often those reasons utterly contradictory.

Have a serious think about it one day, how massive the problem is – how anything you try to put into place, any problem you try and fix in the system will be seen as a failure by some political viewpoint. How each and every policy you implement to help those who have legitimate reason to be and stay in the country is abused endlessly by those who don’t.

Then maybe you might get some idea that you get some idea what the people who work in immigration have to deal with.

Trying to come in on a tourist visa after you’ve been turned down for a work visa is just going to raise red flags for immigration sadly & they don’t have any compassion (or much room for compromise once their aware of an issue): it’s drummed out of them by the work.

His best bet is probably to marry his girlfriend if she’ll have him…

I think it’s the sort of thing where the universe is big enough that you could just make up events, too. Maybe follow a SC agent through the Iridian War, or something.

Immigration workers have to follow these policies to the letter, because if they let one person through then that starts setting a precedent, and people who don’t deserve to be let through will try and take that route.

They have to follow the rules, it’s their job -even if the rules are complicated and often ignore reality for tick boxes on some kind of checklist.

The reality is most Visa workers (my uncle being one of them and always having stories) see hundreds of people a day, and have to deal with dozens in detail.
Many of those, if not the majority are trying to get into the country and stay here permanently, they’ll lie, cheat, claim ignorance to the rules and basically do everything they can to get around the system.

So is it shocking that many workers get a bit jaded when dealing with people?

Yes it sucks that there are some qualified, well meaning people who probably would be upstanding productive British citizens, who fail due to slipping in the cracks of the rules.

Only an idiot would deny the need for any country (especially one with such a social support system as ours) the need to control it’s borders.
It’s just not as easy as some people think, how do you decide who gets in and who doesn’t? how do you judge what counts as qualified, experienced or skilled enough?

While I’m sure most would agree needing a degree is a bit much (especially for highly skilled vocational trades), what limit do you set for a Academic Visa?

Some might complain that they dropped the artistic visa, but from what I’ve been told they did it for good reason, as it was the prime method of getting a visa under false pretence, second only to education visa’s.

It’s just a shame that people like this published graphic novel artist, got stuck in the system, while tems (if not hundreds) of thousands of Asian and eastern European skill-less workers slip through the system daily.
All they do most of the time is throw away their passports once they get inside the country, lie about their names and identities – because if no one knows who they are you can’t deport them (no country will except a them without identification). Nor can you hold them in detention or prison while the authorities investigate who they are.
All they can do is take finger prints and DNA and release them, hoping that next time they get caught, they’ll have an identity for them.

It’s one of the prime reasons the government wants biometric ID to become law, even for part time Visa’s.

No, you don’t get your £500 back.

I do wish there were more first-person dungeon crawlers out there… :(