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[127/366] No Recourse to Public Funds
May. 7th, 2020 10:19 pmI got tagged on twitter so I'd see a tweet where someone's saying that No Recourse to Public Funds has been found to be unlawful. Which, yay, but every time it turned up in my mentions again because someone liked it or replied or whatever, I felt bad again and I eventually realized this evening that I was getting angry.
I was angry because the tweet said NRPF started in 2012 and it didn't. Maybe in its current form, since like so many aspects of immigration it was made worse in 2012 under Theresa May as Home Secretary. But I know it didn't start then because it was ruining my life in 2006. I feel...gaslighted actually? by this.
NRPF was alive and well when I got married and moved here in 2006. I was too mentally ill to work after the sudden death of my brother and then emigrating away from my stricken parents but I wasn't entitled to any benefits because of NRPF. Andrew, British and never even lived outside of Britain, couldn't have any benefits either, not even jobseeker's when the company he worked for went bankrupt three months into our marriage. Our two years of NRPF were a nightmare of bailiffs and meager food and worrying I'd be evicted and deported.
And something about seeing the policy related only back to 2012 just makes me crazy. It seems to invalidate all that suffering and darkness from a time that I both have very poor memories of and that has shaped my life ever since. I can't forget it but it's still hard to remember.
It makes me so proud and grateful that I was able to help one UK political party make policy about eradicating it altogether, not just taking it from its post-Theresa-May 5 years back to 2 like I suffered through. The MP introducing our immigration policy was stanning hard for "let's do the bad thing for only two years instead of five" and I proposed an amendment that said "no actually let's not do the bad thing at all"; I was a figurehead of a lot of work going on by friends and others in the party and we won, we got the votes so the Lib Dems can greet news of the suspension of NRPF with "let's never bring it back." It's cruel and evil and totally unnecessary.
Anyway, today I'm not being gaslighted, Andrew just told me it's the Guardian saying NRPF only goes back to 2012 and not 1993 and their reputation for accuracy is what got them the nickname "Grauniad." I need to get over myself but it's hard, it's a real trigger.
I was angry because the tweet said NRPF started in 2012 and it didn't. Maybe in its current form, since like so many aspects of immigration it was made worse in 2012 under Theresa May as Home Secretary. But I know it didn't start then because it was ruining my life in 2006. I feel...gaslighted actually? by this.
NRPF was alive and well when I got married and moved here in 2006. I was too mentally ill to work after the sudden death of my brother and then emigrating away from my stricken parents but I wasn't entitled to any benefits because of NRPF. Andrew, British and never even lived outside of Britain, couldn't have any benefits either, not even jobseeker's when the company he worked for went bankrupt three months into our marriage. Our two years of NRPF were a nightmare of bailiffs and meager food and worrying I'd be evicted and deported.
And something about seeing the policy related only back to 2012 just makes me crazy. It seems to invalidate all that suffering and darkness from a time that I both have very poor memories of and that has shaped my life ever since. I can't forget it but it's still hard to remember.
It makes me so proud and grateful that I was able to help one UK political party make policy about eradicating it altogether, not just taking it from its post-Theresa-May 5 years back to 2 like I suffered through. The MP introducing our immigration policy was stanning hard for "let's do the bad thing for only two years instead of five" and I proposed an amendment that said "no actually let's not do the bad thing at all"; I was a figurehead of a lot of work going on by friends and others in the party and we won, we got the votes so the Lib Dems can greet news of the suspension of NRPF with "let's never bring it back." It's cruel and evil and totally unnecessary.
Anyway, today I'm not being gaslighted, Andrew just told me it's the Guardian saying NRPF only goes back to 2012 and not 1993 and their reputation for accuracy is what got them the nickname "Grauniad." I need to get over myself but it's hard, it's a real trigger.