What happens if you mistakenly apply for British citizenship? • Hacker News Board

Re: What happens if you mistakenly apply for British citizenship?

#131

Post by Cyph0n » Sat, Aug 18, 2018, 4:35 PM UTC

azinman2 wrote: post #97

analog31 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may be even more fundamental: Good leaders emerge from a good democracy. Maybe what the Middle East needs is to copy from the constitutions of successful democracies. Even adopting just our First Amendment would be a decent start.

Democracy isn’t always the best form of government for a given population. I think all attempts to force it that have blown up are a good demonstration of this. It depends a lot on the culture, the would be leaders, etc. It should be emergent and home-grown, not exported.

Your last sentence is 100% true: forcing democracy on a country is never going to work.

But claiming that democracy doesn't suit all populations is something I do not agree with.

Democracy is the only form of government where (in practice) the people have a say in how their country is run.

Re: What happens if you mistakenly apply for British citizenship?

#132

Post by cm2187 » Sat, Aug 18, 2018, 4:35 PM UTC

xaranke wrote: post #88

tinktank wrote: post #2

Can't say I'm surprised by this outcome at all. The British government has long since been screwing over would be immigrants in fees, bureaucracy and rules. The point to note is -- had he not been an American with resources, and instead, say a Somali refugee, the outcome would have been very different and we'd never have heard about it. For those of you interested in how validated legal extortion can become, go look…

As someone who recently applied for a UK Visa, I was shocked that it cost around $120 for 6 months. A comparable US visa for 10 years costs around $160.

That's nothing. Citizenship costs over £1000.

Re: What happens if you mistakenly apply for British citizenship?

#133

Post by ethbro » Sat, Aug 18, 2018, 4:40 PM UTC

Cyph0n wrote: post #128

ethbro wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usually the ones who were proponents of national self-determination and/or assassinated: Yitzhak Rabin (Israel), Yasser Arafat (Palestine), Mohammad Mosaddegh (Iran, who the US deposed), Anwar Sadat (Egypt), Gamal Abdel Nasser (Egypt), Mohammed Daoud Khan (Afghanistan), Faisal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud (Saudi Arabia).

That's not at a useful metric at all. For example, most of the nationalist/Kemalist leaders were brutal autocrats. I'd argue that the best among them was Borguiba, but I suppose you've never heard of him.

That wasn't my metric.

It was a historical attribute that many "good leaders in the Middle East" shared.

And you specified Middle Eastern, which I took to be exclusive of the Maghreb.

Re: What happens if you mistakenly apply for British citizenship?

#134

Post by cm2187 » Sat, Aug 18, 2018, 4:40 PM UTC

brm wrote: post #89

It shouldn't be this hard in the first place... Want a strong country? Let anyone who puts 50,000 of your currency in a local bank and has a college degree stay there. I shouldn't need 250K and have a business plan, or 2 million pounds to invest. I certainly shouldn't have to bond myself to a corporation or get married to be allowed to live there and pay taxes. Ban me from public government benefits for 5 years until…

Agree, though you can't have exclusively a wealthy and educated immigration. Most western countries have a critical age pyramid problem. There is a need for mass immigration too. Though it would probably be wiser to diversify the sources of immigration, and to consider the cultural compatibility too.

Re: What happens if you mistakenly apply for British citizenship?

#135

Post by UncleEntity » Sat, Aug 18, 2018, 4:40 PM UTC

ethbro wrote: post #111

azinman2 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Democracy isn’t always the best form of government for a given population. I think all attempts to force it that have blown up are a good demonstration of this. It depends a lot on the culture, the would be leaders, etc. It should be emergent and home-grown, not exported.

> It should be emergent and home-grown, not exported. It's amazing how bad government "democratic nation-building" is at realizing this. Democracy is, at best , a generational project. This issues we're seeing in autocratic -> democratic states are almost inherent in an overly quick transition. From a game theory perspective, why would any leaders act in the best interest of the country when there are no institutions…

IDK, (most of) the Eastern European former Soviet satellite states did a pretty good job of it in less than a generation.

Most people tend to point to Iraq as the model of "democratic nation-building" but that was probably the best example of what not to do -- send all the bureaucrats (who were, by necessity, members of the Ba'ath party) home and deny them a say in the new government, disband the police and military forces, basically let the people do whatever they want with revenge killings and ethnic cleansing of neighborhoods and keep the people who are (presumably) in charge of law and order bottled up on the military bases with limited contact with the local population.

It still boggles my mind the total shitshow post-invasion Iraq turned into...

Re: What happens if you mistakenly apply for British citizenship?

#136

Post by Cyph0n » Sat, Aug 18, 2018, 4:44 PM UTC

ethbro wrote: post #133

Cyph0n wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not at a useful metric at all. For example, most of the nationalist/Kemalist leaders were brutal autocrats. I'd argue that the best among them was Borguiba, but I suppose you've never heard of him.

That wasn't my metric. It was a historical attribute that many "good leaders in the Middle East" shared. And you specified Middle Eastern, which I took to be exclusive of the Maghreb.

Look up what MENA stands for.

Re: What happens if you mistakenly apply for British citizenship?

#137

Post by ethbro » Sat, Aug 18, 2018, 4:46 PM UTC

UncleEntity wrote: post #135

ethbro wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It should be emergent and home-grown, not exported. It's amazing how bad government "democratic nation-building" is at realizing this. Democracy is, at best , a generational project. This issues we're seeing in autocratic -> democratic states are almost inherent in an overly quick transition. From a game theory perspective, why would any leaders act in the best interest of the country when there are no institutions…

IDK, (most of) the Eastern European former Soviet satellite states did a pretty good job of it in less than a generation. Most people tend to point to Iraq as the model of "democratic nation-building" but that was probably the best example of what not to do -- send all the bureaucrats (who were, by necessity, members of the Ba'ath party) home and deny them a say in the new government, disband the police and military…

I'd defer to someone more intimately aquatinted with Eastern Europe's pre-Soviet history, but my impression is that it followed many of the same themes as Western Europe.

Which is to say the area was likely primed for democracy over hundreds of years in a similar manner.

And as anthithetical as communist mono-party government is to pluralist democracy, one can certainly make the case that it can be credited with building institutions and a functioning bureaucracy.

Many organs of which directly mapped to democratic equivalents, as near as I can tell.

As for Iraq, absolutely agreed. And I think essentially everyone still working in foreign policy now believes de-Ba'ath-ization was a terrible mistake.

Re: What happens if you mistakenly apply for British citizenship?

#138

Post by yalph » Sat, Aug 18, 2018, 4:50 PM UTC

Cyph0n wrote: post #128

ethbro wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Usually the ones who were proponents of national self-determination and/or assassinated: Yitzhak Rabin (Israel), Yasser Arafat (Palestine), Mohammad Mosaddegh (Iran, who the US deposed), Anwar Sadat (Egypt), Gamal Abdel Nasser (Egypt), Mohammed Daoud Khan (Afghanistan), Faisal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud (Saudi Arabia).

That's not at a useful metric at all. For example, most of the nationalist/Kemalist leaders were brutal autocrats. I'd argue that the best among them was Borguiba, but I suppose you've never heard of him.

Firstly nonsense about most Kemalist leaders being brutal autocrats. Second whats your point?

Re: What happens if you mistakenly apply for British citizenship?

#139

Post by mmsimanga » Sat, Aug 18, 2018, 4:52 PM UTC

sbmthakur wrote: post #122

azinman2 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Democracy isn’t always the best form of government for a given population. I think all attempts to force it that have blown up are a good demonstration of this. It depends a lot on the culture, the would be leaders, etc. It should be emergent and home-grown, not exported.

Precisely. What proponents of "export democracy" forget is that it takes time to develop a democratic tradition. Democracy in the US and the UK is centuries old. In the case of France and Germany, it took bloodbaths to turn them into democracy in a short time. Not different to what happened in few Arab states. In India(my home nation), we have a 70 years old democracy. It's broken but functioning. And hopefully, we w…

You are right, but faced with a migration crisis such as the one we have what would you have the West (because that's where most migrants are heading) do?

Re: What happens if you mistakenly apply for British citizenship?

#140

Post by heavenlyblue » Sat, Aug 18, 2018, 4:54 PM UTC

gambiting wrote: post #112

heavenlyblue wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try calling the Home Office support line and ask them a simple question: "If I had been a student for the past 5 years and had fully supported myself by working for the same period of time, do I need to present you with the health insurance papers that are required if you are a student?". I'm betting that for every 5 calls you make over there, you'll get a different answer. That is also true for the applications made…

Yep, I'm on the same boat. I've lived here for 8 years but I can't apply for permanent resident status(and hence for citizenship) because I didn't have private health insurance while I was a student. I have also played this game with home office - you ring them up and ask "can you remain in the UK as an EU citizen if you are not exercising your EU free movement rights" - the answer will be no, you cannot. Then you ca…

The fact is that I had the EHIC (European Health Insurance Card) when I came to the UK. It's validity is 2 years, and they (officially) do not accept documents which are outdated. How do I then even prove I had it for 5 years?

That card had never been required at the NHS either.

Took me another £300 (lawyers, official printing excess) to just get the right documents supporting that and I still had no idea if they would even be accepted - because their support line is absolutely oblivious (and to be clear - that is the only support channel they have, outside lawyers themselves who can only advise based on their experience, rather than a set of written guidelines).

The sad thing is that you can still get away with it. But I can see how that turns a huge amount of genuinely honest people away too.