is the length of time i need to work in the UK before i can apply for permanent residency here. (it's five years, like in DE). once i have that shiny sticker in my passport, i can then immediately apply for naturalisation, after taking a few additional steps.
while i could speak of the cultural benefits of integrating into a society by holding a passport for it, i imagine the biggest benefit will be for my travel partners...
last night, we came back on the late flight from Bilbao on EasyJet. The late flight which was supposed to arrive back at 22.35 took off 40 minutes late, so we didn't go to Stansted until after 23.00. (Granted, it did allow us an extra glass or two of Spanish wine and time with our friend there, so there are worse places to be delayed.)
Then, I was well in the back of the queue of whatever intra Europe flights were dumping transatlantic passengers into Stansted at that hour...while they had two people to work the desk for a queue of over 100 in front of me, plus at least another 100 who then came after. there were a few additional queues open on the EU side to cover the hundreds arriving there.
in looking around my queue, the passports were a variety of american, canadian, new zealand, japanese, israeli, and indian. i estimate that the average american tourist gets questioned three minutes upon arriving to the UK, nevermind this melting pot of passports where some of the questioning went on for 5-10 minutes.
my EU travel partner waved from the opposite side of the customs gates, he would pick up the baggage and come back....thumbs up.
he waves from the other side with the baggage...yep, i'm still here.
we inches along painfully--and thankfully i didn't need to catch a bus. it was at this point that i started to calculate how long i would need to get a British passport...then i started to calculate in my head the number of weeks....and then number of days.
total time spent in the queue? -->1 hour, 10 min
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I have seriously considered giving up my US passport for ANYTHING in the EU. For some reason, the UK ALWAYS stops me. I was there for a choir trip once and being the only American, was, of course, taken aside to be questioned-the other choir members laughing (until they reazlied they had to wait for me!) I swear I am the lamest person around so I have no idea why they are mistrustful of me... Anyway, I empathize... :)
Yelli: dont get me started (again) ;-)
Well, to be fair, I was at JFK a few weeks ago and wound up in a 2.5 hour line to get to the line (at naturalization). There was a person-jam in the hall before the escalator and they wound up bringing in authorities to clear it out (new planes were disembarking in front of older groups and there was no movement at all until authorities came in). After we got into the hall, the citizens moved quickly.
The UK likes to pull me out too- last time they spent some time asking why I was visiting for the week (they thought I was using the UK to revalidate my time in Germany) but said Good-bye and thanks for the fish when I showed my visa xerox (temp passport).
I wouldn't give up my US Citizenship to be Queen of the commonwealth, but I do envy the easse of dual nationals.
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