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"...(the only access to the islands) is to have a pre-arranged job contract with a company that has signed a form of bond taking responsibility for you" That s

• lmm 5y ago
  Is it bizarre? Sounds like similar rules to anywhere - no country wants to let in people who can't support themselves.
  • ben_w 5y ago
    It feels like double-counting to me: > pay all my healthcare contributions for a year up front Is fine by itself, at least assuming you then get a discount on the PAYE taxes that you’re essentially pre-paying here. > If I lose my job I have a few weeks to find a new employer (who will have to be willing to pay for a visa transfer) or I have to leave the country. Paying to transfer the visa seems a bit strange to me (though I’m conscious of my own naïveté), but otherwise this is also fine by itself. Both together? Not so much.
    • Nursie 5y ago
      > Paying to transfer the visa seems a bit strange to me There's a bureaucracy to support, so fees for everything they do.
      • MichaelZuo 5y ago
        Yes, imagine if the bureaucracy lost the visa paperwork and it was ‘free’. Paying for services rendered as described is certainly the standard expectation.
  • zerr 5y ago
    Not being an employee (for a while or forever) doesn't mean not being able to support yourself. Yes, super-rich enjoy this freedom (of movement and living where they please), but there are lots of people who are rich/sustainable enough to contribute positively to any economy but current immigration systems doesn't allow this in most countries.
    • lmm 5y ago
      No categorisation system is perfect, so there will always be cases that fall through the cracks, but most countries try to offer a spread of visas that cover most of the kinds of positive contributions to the country that they want to attract, without permitting too many who will be a drain instead. Work visas are by no means the only option, but if you're arguing that you're going to contribute positively to the economy then you need to be able to demonstrate that.
      • zerr 5y ago
        That's the problem, there is no way to demonstrate (apply) for many countries, including UK.
• DoreenMichele 5y ago
  I felt like the detail that mattered there was that it is the only way to get through the British military air base at Mount Pleasant (the only access to the islands). If you don't have to pass through a military base to get somewhere, there is a bit of wiggle room. You are supposed to do X, Y or Z but there end up being some exceptions. In this case, the military base has a stranglehold on entry so you aren't likely to see folks bending the rules a tad.
  • aww_dang 5y ago
    I believe cruise ships provide access. There maybe access via other ships as well.
    • deleted 5y ago
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    • Symbiote 5y ago
      It's difficult to find due to Covid limits, but it looks like there are usually scheduled flights a couple of times a week to cities in Chile and Brazil.
    • DoreenMichele 5y ago
      That's still fairly restrictive. Even with airplanes, it's fairly restrictive. Much easier if you have a land border for illegal immigrants to wander in, as the US can attest to with it's ridiculous scheme to "build a wall" to resolve the issue.
• meowtimemania 5y ago
  I’m from in the US and am naïve, but what is bizarre about that system?
  • MomoXenosaga 5y ago
    The US is actually bizarre, anyone born in the US automatically gets US nationality. This leads to amusing birth tourism. Iirc it is the only country that does this.
    • wodenokoto 5y ago
      It’s called Jus Soli and while not the most common thing, it isn’t exactly special to the US. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jus_soli https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jus_soli
      • barry-cotter 5y ago
        The only other country with such liberal application of jus soli is New Zealand. In no other country I'm aware of can you show up, give birth and they will definitely give the child a passport unless the mother or father is a diplomat.
        • yardie 5y ago
          It is widely practiced in the Western Hemisphere. Which is why you can be Mexican or Panamanian and run for president of the US.
          • xjlin0 5y ago
            I thought US presidents need to be born on US?
            • dangerbird2 5y ago
              No, they just have to be US citizens at birth: either born on American soil or to U.S. parents abroad. This is why Ted Cruz and George Romney could run for president despite being born outside the U.S.
• nbevans 5y ago
  These are completely normal and typical immigration visa rules the world over. As always though - there are "better" visa's available but they have different sets of requirements and/or costs involved.
• the-dude 5y ago
  What are the policies in your home country btw?
• mellosouls 5y ago
  It sounds perfectly reasonable. Barring exceptional circumstances, presumably the employer takes the decision to recruit externally for cost-cutting reasons; it's important then that the hidden costs of healthcare etc are not passed on to the tax payer.
  • pjc50 5y ago
    But both the employer and employee are tax payers! There's nothing uniquely expensive about taxpaying employees that happen to be born overseas. I'm guessing the prepaid contribution refers to the "NHS surcharge": https://www.freemovement.org.uk/what-is-the-immigration-health-surcharge/ https://www.freemovement.org.uk/what-is-the-immigration-heal... (while Americans are probably going "hey that looks cheap at £624 a year compared to my insurance", note that it's not insurance and you still have to pay it if you have private cover)
    • harry8 5y ago
      Without commenting on the policy I think you're missing the maths. I can earn $x here or $(x - y) to be in the uk. In the UK I get healthcare on the NHS. I move. I quit / am fired / co goes (creatively?) broke. And I keep the healthcare on the NHS and have time to start a family before deportation etc. Think about large values of y or indeed kickbacks. Does the firm really want /me/? Or do they just want cash which they get by paying very low (or taking a fee from me) as I get an end run around the immigration system to get healthcare without making the contribution, queue jumping better qualified, harder working, more civic minded people with greater compassionate grounds for being accepted? As ever there's a continuum. "Clearly this person is legitimately... ...then the unexpected thing happened." ends up being harder and quite expensive to identify and enforce fairly and equitably with a public service doing so. I say nothing of the UK's policy here or its implementation as I'm ignorant. Assuming entrepreneurs won't spring up to arbitrage any system hole they can is naive. Immigration is super-emotive at the best of times especially arbitrarily unfair treatment and those who feel like they're losing from it (rightly or wrongly). That's the general case being made. Immigration policy is super hard and you kind of have to willfully fortify your compassion as well. More than 700 million people on this planet have no safe drinking water and would want to migrate to any wealthy country under almost any circumstance. Plenty are literally dying to do it. How can we not feel for them? Being compassionate reduces to deciding how many people your country can take easily, with effort, or the level in which society collapses. 700m immigrating in a year will probably achieve collapse. "What then must we do?" I haven't got a good answer or indeed a better one than fight corruption everywhere and anywhere under all circumstances.
• yodsanklai 5y ago
  Went to the same visa process recently. It left me with the feeling that foreigners were viewed with suspicion. > I doubt British people know how bizarre the policies that arose from their voting are either. I assumed this actually was a consequence of their voting (seems in line with Brexit).
  • deleted 5y ago
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  • nicoburns 5y ago
    It does seem more or less in line with the Brexit votes, but it's worth remembering that the vote was pretty close and a large chunk of the country voted against Brexit. You'll find a wide variety of attitudes to immigration within the UK.
  • jollybean 5y ago
    It hast nothing to do with Brexit, I suggest this is actually a kind of political bigotry. Here's data showing national attitudes towards migrants [1], the UK has consistently one of, if not the most positive view in Europe towards migrants. It's always been a fairly pluralistic place relative to most places on the continent. The notion of reducing migration or having some control over it is fundamentally different that views of migrants themselves, much like there's a big distinction between regular migrants and undocumented migrants, which is sometimes conveniently ignored for political reasons. The rules for migrants are varied in every country, they are similar on the Continent in many ways where they have their own bits of weirdness. The Falkland Islands have a population of 3000, which is really, really small. Every 'small nation' especially the really tiny one's are going to have a really peculiar take on basically everything. There's either one person, or not even one person the kinds of jobs for which we take for granted. [1] https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2019/03/14/around-the-world-more-say-immigrants-are-a-strength-than-a-burden/ https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2019/03/14/around-the-wor...
• alibarber 5y ago
  I am British and I moved to an EU country when Britain was still in the EU. I was surprised because unless I went to the immigration office to prove to them that I either had 'enough' (never really defined) money to support myself, or had a permanent employment contract - I would not have any state coverage for anything (health etc). The UK would of course not support my health care in a different country on a permanent basis. This was within the EU, so free movement and that - so I was indeed surprised, that other countries did something similar within the EU.
  • cataphract 5y ago
    What country is this? In Portugal you only need a declaration under penalty of perjury that 1) you are employed or self-employed (no need of a permanent contract), 2) that you have enough money to support yourself and your dependents and that you have health insurance, provided such requirement applies to Portuguese citizens in your country of origin (leaving asides the students here). In particular the national law that transposes directive 2004/38/EC (Lei n.º 37/2006) says in article 9, n. 4: > [...] Without prejudice to the dispositions in chapter VII, Union citizens or their family shall never be removed in the following circumstances: > a) [...] > b) When the Union citizens entered Portugal to seek employment and they prove that they continue to keep seeking employment. Chapter VII only says people who joined to country to look for employment are not entitled to social security even after 3 months (which applies across the board). And when I registered in the Netherlands I don't remember having to provide proof of employment too, though they might have had that information on file. In any case, it was not a permanent contract.
    • alibarber 5y ago
      This is Finland. That declaration is basically what they are checking but you are not trusted to declare it yourself. I don't know how important the permanent thing is or if it is tbh. Here it is not possible to claim salary-linked unemployment benefits (which on paper are actually quite generous) unless you have worked for some period of time (6 months or so in some larger period) even if you are as Finnish as can be. The thing is, there are many 'soft' things that rely on that registration going through, eg. bank account[1], even a local-priced transport pass. [1]A Finnish bank account here is more than a place to stash money, it's proof of your ID online to any of the nice e-government services.
• conductr 5y ago
  My American in laws did expat life in UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, others in the region. They, and many other western expats, employed Filipino house keepers. They have to assume a lot of responsibility for their actions while in the country as well. The expats are there under-highly conditional work visas and employeeing low-wage expats to come into the country was like another level of liability they took on personally and could blow up their work visa status if something really went wrong. It was normal for the expats to take their worker's passport and the Filipino's were basically trapped, and they wouldn't always have a car or any mode of transportation. I recall their biggest fear was if she got pregnant while in their "care" it was almost like the child was their responsibility or if she had some relationship with a married guy it would be a big issue (paraphrased hearsay...). It sounded horrible, but in reality it mostly worked since the western expats were not exploitative but the opportunity is more than present. My understanding is the natives imported labor in a highly exploitive way (low wage labor camps, etc).
  • elliekelly 5y ago
    This reminds me of the article “My Family’s Slave”[1] which is both a powerful story and an interesting look at the cognitive dissonance of people who benefit from modern exploitative labor. Just because someone isn’t constantly and overtly cruel to their “imported labor” does not mean they aren’t exploitative. [1]https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/06/lolas-story/524490/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/06/lolas-s...
    • conductr 5y ago
      > Just because someone isn’t constantly and overtly cruel to their “imported labor” does not mean they aren’t exploitative. While true. What’s also interesting is “exploitative” is often through the modern western lens. It’s also a sliding scale where it is quite often seen as a good deal from labor’s perspective. In my previous example, the Filipino’s generally loved the arrangement. They got to travel and send a good deal of money home. It was a highly sought after position from their perspective. My experience is limited to about 10 days in the region and what I heard from American expats, but the hard labor forces also generally liked the arrangement. It offered opportunities that did not exist wherever they immigrated from. It was not without risks as no/low worker safety or OSHA concepts are in effect. Also just what we would consider fair labor practices, just didn’t exist. I’m sure slavery does exist as well because the opportunity is very present.