No more python at Google

[Steve Sims]

This visa/immigration stuff really pisses me off.

My story on the subject is long and arduous, so please accept my apologies,
but I feel the need to rant.

My wife is Korean, we met and got married in Toronto where we'd planned to
settle.  My wife's student visa got denied and we had to go to the UK with
her 6 months pregnant.

The silly petty rules are annoying, and every step seems to be a kick in the
teeth.

You're not allowed to apply for a Canadian student visa in Canada.  So we
had to go to the American embassy to get a US visa to go to Buffalo to the
Canadian Consulate there to apply for her student visa.

US immigration were of course complete dicks - gave me a 6 month stamp, but
gave my wife just 2 days.

The Canadian Consulate refused her visa, which was very distressing.  When
we tried to get back into Canada to go home though we had trouble crossing
the border.  We'd had to apply for extensions on our existing Canadian visas
to wait for her student visa interview, and the extensions said no re-entry.
It was absurd - we couldn't go back to the US, and the Canadians didn't seem
to want to let us back into Canada, so it looked like we'd have to live on
the bridge between the US and Canada at Niagra Falls...  Fortuantely they
saw sense eventually and let us in.

My wife technically wasn't allowed to enter the UK without a spouse's visa,
for which you must apply in your home country.  The British Consul however
could issue such a visa so we tried to see him at the British Consulate in
Ottawa (a 7 hour drive away).  He of course refused to see us.  So much for
the Consul being there to help British citizens.

We decided to risk going to the UK, and were lucky to have a reasonable
official on the border.  We relaxed a little bit and our son was born.

With a newborn we didn't fancy the trek to Korea, so we went to an
immigration lawyer.  That was a useless waste of time and money - their
application failed.  We ended up having to go to Seoul anyway.  We're not
rich - we couldn't afford all this expense, and are still in debt from it.

Now two years have passed and just when she can apply for indefinite leave
to remain they up the fees.  The new fees and rules actually kicked in on
Monday.  On top of the increased fees an immigrant now needs to take an exam
to prove that they know enough about the British way of life.  Yet more
expense.

Naturally our government is incompetent.  The form she needed to submit, a
SET(M), wasn't actually updated until Friday afternoon last week.  So until
then we didn't know the new fee, or the silly exam requirement.

She sent the old version of the form in in Friday...

It seems to me that with fees at the levels they are now the system actively
encourages people to be illegal immigrants.

Steve