At long, long last...

[brightlywoven]

My Indefinite Leave to Remain document has just been delivered. So that's that. 10 years of permission to remain and no restrictions on what we can do. 

We will apply to become citizens next year, because you never know when UKIP might gain power and retrospectively strip settlement rights from nasty foreigners what the future holds, and also because we believe in being committed to the community in which you live, if you're allowed. 

I though this timely piece in the Guardian captured for me very nicely the pernicious uncertainty in the whole process (though as ever, don't read the comments). Ridiculously privileged though we are, this uncertainty has touched most of the past 7 years. I'm really going to enjoy living with the knowledge that we can keep building our little lives here. 

Comments

[aedh]

Yes! Massive congratulations to the pair of you.

[brightlywoven]

Thank you!
(I did laugh when the man delivering the card said 'what on earth are you doing here when you could be in Australia' :)

[raven]

Many many congratulations, lovely you.

[brightlywoven]

Thank you kind lady x

[tree_and_leaf]

Hurrah! I'm very happy for you both - it's a huge thing.

[brightlywoven]

Thank you! It's an enormous relief

[sir_guinglain]

Many, many congratulations.

[brightlywoven]

Thank you!

[sally_maria]

That's excellent news, I'm very pleased to hear it. :-)

[brightlywoven]

Thanks a lot!

[alitalf]

Congratulations, I am sure this is well deserved, as well as being an item of concern that you can now stop worrying about.

I am not sure why rejecting the rule of the EU Commission would make this welcome result less likely, though. If it made a difference, which seems unlikely, it would be more probable that the EU Commission would oppose people such as you living here, because your point of origin is outside the EU.

[brightlywoven]

Well, the immigration conversation (as I have been hearing it) is not simply about leaving the EU. It's about increasing 'them vs us' rhetoric on all fronts, it's the increasingly accepted suggestion that unemployment, underemployment and housing unaffordability are all directly attributable to immigration. Even to the extent that the government would suppress a report that concluded immigration was not actually displacing locals from jobs. It's a government that can pass a law limiting the ability of its own citizens to marry foreigners unless those citizens are sufficiently wealthy, and that law being simply accepted. Maybe you have be paying attention to what's said in particular quarters, but the public dialogue has been increasingly scary for anyone whose right to reside is at all tenuous.

(That doesn't even start on the recent law giving the Home Secretary the right to strip citizenship from foreign born citizens she doesn't like, without having to prove anything against them).