Here's my general election prediction: the run-up to it will ruin my mental health

[cosmolinguist]

On facebook, my friend Richard linked to a poll (I'm not going to share the link because it's too crazy-making for me, but I'm sure you can find it: "Exclusive Mirror poll shows General Election on a knife edge") and one of the things he said about it was I do not want to live in a country where 34% trust UKIP most on immigration.

I most heartily agree with this sentiment, of course, so I commented to say, "I don't, either"... After a moment's thought, though, I had to add: "But then I probably won't be able to, anyway."

I've been here long enough that I'm eligible for citizenship, but it's still prohibitively expensive -- around a thousand pounds, last time I checked, and of course the fees are only going to increase the longer I have to leave it.

I remember po8crg once saying that if UKIP win, he'd start a Kickstarter to get me citizenship. At the time the suggestion made me laugh, as a sweet thought to remind me how lovely and supportive my friends are. It's still sweet and my friends are still lovely, but it doesn't make me laugh any more.

Not when things like this are happening. Andrew intends to quit his job by the end of this year to be a freelance writer, which means an unpredictable, unstable income -- this man's fate could totally happen to me, except I don't even have the excuse of a British child to get me sympathy, and he can move his family to South Africa whereas I still don't think Andrew and I could make it in the U.S.

UKIP don't even have to win, really, if the mere specter of them hanging over the main parties that are, or reasonably might expect to be, in power are sufficiently racist and xenophobic to stop people having to change their vote to UKIP.

Anyway, after my facebook comment saying I probably wouldn't be allowed to live in a country where so many people trust UKIP the most on immigration, I woke up this morning to a reply from Richard where he said "And that alone would make it wrong." Which is a nice thing to wake up to. I did mention I have lovely friends, right?

Comments

[magister]

The Kickstarter thing isn't the worst idea I've heard. Plus we have a cellar you could hide in. Just saying.

[cosmolinguist]

Thank you. :)

(Before some pedant points it out to me:) I know it couldn't technically be Kickstarter, because they have rules about not using the money to fund your life, but there are similar websites for such things. I think Kickstarter is just becoming the generic name for crowdfunding, like Google is for search engines.

[magister]

I didn't even know that about Kickstarter.

[cosmolinguist]

I wasn't thinking of you, I was thinking of Andrew. :) I only know it because he told me that before.

[(Anonymous)]

There's ways round that kind of thing anyway. Kickstart the making of a documentary about the immigration process, following one woman's attempts to navigate the citizenship system. Or a book on the subject. All doable ;)

[cosmolinguist]

I think there should be such books or movies anyway, even if they don't pay my fees. No one who hasn't been there or close to someone who is has any idea what being an immigrant is like: they think we just get all the jobs and houses and benefits and the other stupid stuff the media and politicians feed them.

[(Anonymous)]

Absolutely agreed.

From Andrew (DW's OpenID thing is borked)

[(Anonymous)]

Not that it matters to the main point of the post, but I just want to make sure none of Holly's friends are worried about her being deported or anything. We currently have enough cash in savings that we could pay for the citizenship fee. If we spent that money, we have enough credit on our credit cards to pay it. If we ran up credit card debt, I can think of at least four people who would be willing to lend us some or all of the cost. Crowdfunding will not be necessary...

(And yes, I plan to become a full-time writer within a year. But I only plan to do that if I can earn enough that way for us to live off. I've always, even when I've worked minimum wage jobs, been able to earn enough money for anything we've needed for Holly to stay over here.)

Re: From Andrew (DW's OpenID thing is borked)

[cosmolinguist]

I never said crowdfunding would be necessary, just that po8crg offered, which I thought was a sweet example of my friends' concern for me.

Re: From Andrew (DW's OpenID thing is borked)

[(Anonymous)]

I know, and it is. But I wanted to make sure no-one worried.

[silveradept]

That is a wonderful sentiment, and we agree with it wholeheartedly. Any country that gives into xenophobia isn't a country to live in for very long.

[nanila]

If you ever do need or want to crowdfund the cost of a citizenship application (or another person to check over the application, since I've done one), please let me know. I would like to help.

[cosmolinguist]

Thank you; I will keep these offers in mind. I no doubt will need some moral support at the time, if nothing else. :)

[gillyg.livejournal.com]

The worst thing about UKIP is that in their eyes you'd probably be "acceptable" as you're white. When it comes down to it they are mostly concerned about black immigrants,.

[cosmolinguist]

Absolutely. Though Eastern Europeans have it tough despite being white.

But while I know these xenophobic bigots aren't talking about white English-speaking Americans like me, I'll still end up subject to whatever changes they bring in, because we can't actually make laws explicitly racist any more, so now we have to talk about immigration rather than the color of people's skin or their language or religion or whatever. So it's all fine and good that everybody knows what everybody means when they bemoan "all those immigrants coming over here" -- several years ago immigration used to be called a dog-whistle for racism, but a few years ago I said it'd ceased to be that and was just a regular whistle (and a damn noisy one at that) -- but it means we not-that-kind-of immigrants, the English-speaking Americans like me, are just as stressed, impoverished, inconvenienced and terrified by the hoops that immigration law makes us jump through as anyone who better fits the stereotype of the kind of immigrant people do mean when they tell us they "don't mean our kind."