Get back!

[jez]

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/storydisplay.cfm?storyID=3538813&thesection=news&thesubsection=world

CANBERRA - As many as 500,000 Britons living in Australia for as long as 50 years have been declared aliens and subject to deportation if they cross the Immigration Minister of the day.

[ramchop]

Shock Horror! Britons to have rights reduced to those of the Japanese

Overturning two previous decisions, the High Court - the nation's final court of appeal - has severed one of the few remaining traces of colonialism by lumping British and Irish-born residents who arrived after 1948 in the same migration pile as anyone else born outside the country.

How dare they!! The British are special and should be treated accordingly.

[Caustic Saint]

Canada's doing roughly the same thing with their new immigration cards. The only problem is they're required for re-entry as of 1 Jan 2004, and there's a massive backlog of issuing them.

From the Toronto Sun:
Immigration card uproar
Process puts travel up in the air

By TOM GODFREY, TORONTO SUN

Some 50,000 Ontario residents won't be boarding international flights for the holidays because their landed immigrant cards will not be ready due to a backlog, lawyers say. Immigration lawyers from Toronto to B.C. said the immigrants had applied September for the Maple Leaf cards beginning in September, but a shortage of staff is delaying the process.

"This is the worst situation I have seen in my 43 years of practising immigration law," Mendel Green said. "The bureaucracy is out of control."

Immigration laws require landed immigrants to have a Maple Leaf card to return to Canada after Dec. 31.

[Alcazar]

CANBERRA - As many as 500,000 Britons living in Australia for as long as 50 years have been declared aliens and subject to deportation if they cross the Immigration Minister of the day.

Where I live there are many Poms who still retain their British citizenship, and have not even taken out Australian citizenship even though they have been here for years. One lives next door, she too would have lived here about 50 years and has not even bothered to get Australian citizenship.

What are these people waiting for? Like the quality of life in England is one day going to overtake the quality of life in Australia and they are going to go 'home'? I don't think so......

[ramchop]

Where I live there are many Poms who still retain their British citizenship, and have not even taken out Australian citizenship even though they have been here for years. One lives next door, she too would have lived here about 50 years and has not even bothered to get Australian citizenship.

Why should they? They still consider themselves British, and with Aussie residency they're perfectly entitled to live there.

If you happened to live in Japan for the next 50 years, would you renounce your Australian citizenship and consider yourself Japanese?

[Alcazar]

Why should they? They still consider themselves British, and with Aussie residency they're perfectly entitled to live there.

If you happened to live in Japan for the next 50 years, would you renounce your Australian citizenship and consider yourself Japanese?

In the case of Japan, I wouldn't renounce my Australian citizenship, no way. I think that given Japan is such a different place, things could turn really bad for a gaijin in any given era, and that you would need a way to get out. But probably not. I just see the need for contingency plans always.

For the English in Australia, there are never going to need a British passport as an 'escape', ie, they are never going to be persecuted. Probably lots of English think that having an EU passport too is a good idea, so they retained their British passport, fair enough.

I would consider becoming a citizen of a foreign nation (I don't plan too at this stage) if I lived my life in the US for example-why not? That is, if I really lived there: House, marriage, job, kids, rarely leaving in years etc. That would be my home. Same goes for other friendly nations.

Ramchop, I visited NZ earlier this year, and I would definitely consider living in Christchurch or somewhere else in Canterbury if I could-I really liked it's climate, flora and quietness.