Well THAT didn't end where I expected it to!

[cosmolinguist]

It's not a citizenship test. I don't know why this bothers me as much as it does, but I get so goddam irate when I hear politicians, media, everyone calling it a citizenship test and no one challenging it or correcting them.

I'm not quite sure how well my experience generalizes, so I'll just tell you how it worked for me. As a non-EU citizen marrying a British person, I got a spouse visa. This was stressful, expensive and sucky in itself, but I won't go into it here. The visa lasts for two years, and you're responsible for having the next thing in place by the time it runs out.

The next thing is called Indefinite Leave to Remain. You send off an application with all kinds of bank statements, bills proving you both live in the same place (this is their idea of proving you're still married), photos of both of us, my passport...oh yeah, and a lot of money.

Up until a month or two before I needed to pay it, the fee had been something like £350. When I did it, they'd more than doubled it to £750. This was about a month's income for me, and a lot more disposable income than we had at the time, and it made me stressed and angry and crazy. But what can you do? They know they have a captive audience. It's not like you can go to the other British government down the street and get a better deal.

And you have to send a pass score from the Life in the UK Test.

Maybe they call it a citizenship test because it's modeled on the U.S. citizenship test...and for the same reasons: xenophobia and racism. I think some people do have to take it to be naturalized as a British citizen. But I took it and I can't be a citizen (I'm too poor to be), so I don't think it's right to call it a citizenship test unless you're going to post me my maroon passport real quick now.

"I'm not sure how my ability to memorise some truly niggly multiple choice questions would make me a better citizen," marjory commented on an entry of mine.

It does a few things. First, it makes money for the government. When I took the test it was about £40 (I'm sure this has gone up since), which was no small amount of money for me and I'm sure not for a lot of the people I saw taking the test with me (there were a lot of mothers with many small children running around that they clearly couldn't get childcare for. You also have to buy the Home-Office-branded study guide, which is another tenner at least. Probably the book of practice tests too (I was lucky enough to get that from a friend who'd taken the test not long before I did).

Of course all this is peanuts to the totally arbitrary fees you have to pay when you send off your application, but still it adds up. I remember thinking the £34 or £37 or whatever I had to bring for the test -- in cash, probably exact change -- was no small amount of money to me, then.

You can retake the test as many times as you need to get a pass mark, but it costs you every time. Think how quickly that would add up.

Second, it proves you can use a computer -- there's no exception to the test being computerized; though the multiple-choice point-and-click stuff seems pretty easy to a lot of us, there are a lot of people who aren't familiar with computers -- and learn/remember stuff to the level of high school or so. Heaven knows how a person with a developmental or learning disability would cope, but then they're obviously less desirable than proper people anyway, eh?

Most importantly, it proves you can speak English. The test is only available in English or Welsh and except for that sliver of South America I don't imagine a lot of people outside the EU would prefer to take it in Welsh. This is to pander to racists and assimilationists and is a big reason the test was brought in. Yes it's nice if they can throw in some propaganda about the green and pleasant land while they're at it, but really they just hope to weed out some of the people that their Empire didn't yet make learn the English language.

"The Life in the UK tests unnerve me. A lot of the time, I scarcely scrape through the exemplars in The Guardian, so I wonder whether I should be here!" reads another comment from marjory.

To whom I can only say, you're thinking about this more than the test wants you to. The test is not to make British people feel they don't belong, it's to make everyone else feel like we don't belong. It's to make you believe that if you don't know when the Welsh were brought under the English legal code, you will be out of place here...when in fact most of Britain's population doesn't know this either.

Which brings us onto the topic of "better" test questions. It was even asked on last week's Question Time (about half an hour in): what question would you like to see included?" po8crg shouted at the telly, "the rules of cricket!" and told me someone else (probably on Twitter) said "will you pay taxes in the UK?" (That latter sounds much more welcoming superficially, but makes me uncomfortable; it makes people into machines for earning money and paying taxes. Immigrants having the jobs with which they pay their taxes is an especially sensitive point in a recession, when there will always be people to perceive this as them taking jobs away from Brits.)

Even Dimbledore admitted to having "tried the present test, incidentally, today and I failed." Alan Johnson, former Secretary of Education, was asked a question about how many days a year schools had to be open and admitted he didn't have a clue. He said we should look at some of the existing questions because knowing these things wasn't as important as...well he babbled about free speech and democracy and "speaking the language" (Dominic Lawsom echoed the importance of speaking English too, as if the only way immigrants can be understood is to speak English because no one in Britain should speak anything else) but I was still glad to see someone questioning the basis of the test, rather than the ideological changes Theresa May wants to make to particular topics covered in it.

Louise Mensch talked utter shit of course -- "I actually sat the test a few times, because my ex-husband is American and we wanted him to get his visa so we had to practice." Like it does any good to him for her to do the test (nd like it's anything to do with a visa...amusing when everyone around her is calling it a citizenship test) -- but even she said "You have to get a very high mark to pass, it's something like 75%, so if you get even a couple of questions wrong, you're out. And they ask really random questions." At least even she "thinks the questions are ludicrous and ridiculous."

Ed Davey had better suggestions: helping people live their lives, stuff like how to access the NHS, get their kids in school, sort out banking, get jobs... There is a bit about some of this stuff -- which would be better placed when a person had just moved here rather than two years later; I already had a bank account, a job, and an NHS GP when I took the test -- but it's exactly this kind of stuff Theresa May wants to get away from.

May also wants to drop sections of the official Life in the UK: A Journey to Citizenship handbook, which explains things such as the Human Rights Act and how to claim welfare benefits and give details of managing everyday life such as reading the gas meter, getting home contents insurance or dealing with the local council.

Instead, Conservative ministers want to tell new migrants that Britain is “historically” a Christian country with a “long and illustrious history”

The things people say would be a better representation of Britain, better stuff for people to know about, serves as a pretty good Rorschach test and, as with any sufficiently big population, the results are wide-ranging and sometimes contradictory. I think the only thing people can agree on is that the existing test doesn't seem right to anyone.

An entry on the Partial Objects blog agrees that "This is not for the benefit of people wanting to get into our country, it’s for the people already living in it, reading about ‘the debate’ in the Guardian."

People talk about Radio 4, and tea, and queuing. A lot talk about how un-British a test about Britishness is, about how a standard feature of the Brit is the unwillingness to take such things seriously. That's all very well, but I didn't have the option to be snide and sarky about this; my life literally depended on it... my marriage, my flat, my job, my friends, everything I consider "my life" would have been jeopardized if I hadn't been able to pass this sodding test, and I think that's what people who aren't immigrants (or close to people who are) fail to understand about this test and the whole process of applying for residency or citizenship: it happens when you've been here long enough to have a house and a job and a bank account and friends and a life here. If you have kids they'll be in school, but their ability to do so depends on you doing your homework and passing a test.

Think about everything that's happened to you in the last two years, whether you moved countries or not, and then imagine that your ability to keep on living that life depended on one little thing. Then imagine it was one little thing designed by someone who didn't want you to know about the Human Rights Act or how to claim benefits.

I want it gone. The Life in the UK Test is a new thing, brought in by the last Labour government; immigrants seemed to cope just as well before that. We don't need it; it does no good and plenty of evil, adding extra stress, powerlessness and inhumane insecurity to the lives of people who have enough of that already. It incites racism, religious hatred, xenophobia, monolingualism and other kinds of bigotry, all of which reduce the appeal of living in Britain by reinforcing intolerance.

Any chance of the Lib Dems having a motion (I know it's too late for autumn now; I can wait for spring) to scrap the Life in the UK Test? Talk to me. Seriously.

Comments

[innerbrat]

I did not know you had to take a test for Leave to Remain after just two years of marriage.

It makes me angry, in part - and I never use this phrase lightly - because it is a clear violation of your human rights.

[cosmolinguist]

Well Theresa May clearly takes a dim view of the right to a family life, particularly.

I am not surprised, but that just leaves me more room to be angry. (And, wow, really wound up. I think I'll go put the kettle on then!)

[magister]

Agreed. The bloody thing's pointless. Life in the UK classes are something I could see the point of if they taught things like what rights people have, what benefits are available and things that would actually be a useful part of living here. Instead of which - well it's his odd mixtureo history and propaganda and designed as you say to make peope feel as if the don't elong here.

[cosmolinguist]

Yeah, there are definitely some kinds of things that I could've done with knowing in my first couple of years here. But as much as that, a class would've been some indication that the UK cared about me, and the opportunity to meet people (especially people in a position something like mine) would've been really good too.

[magister]

We'll be able to tell if they ever get serious about reforming it, because they'll actually start talking to people like you who've been through this process about how it could be improved.

I'm not holding my breath though.

[rmc28]

I don't know if I'll still be a voting rep by spring conference (there's always more people interested than places available in Cambridge) but yes, we should talk about this.

Will you be at autumn conference?

[cosmolinguist]

I will, yes, probably around the LGBT+ stall.

[plumsbitch.livejournal.com]

Applauds

[plumsbitch.livejournal.com]

Also: 'Comment is Free'? Seriously

[cosmolinguist]

I'm slagging off the Guardian! I don't think that's going to do me any favors :)

But thank you, I am flattered.

[plumsbitch.livejournal.com]

one thing I would as as a postrcript: it's designed, as you say, to let a certain type of immigrant in and keep everyone else out.

The "racism, religious hatred, xenophobia, monolingualism and other kinds of bigotry" it incites also impact hugely on plenty of British and non British people living here with no mobility options, and means we end up living in a country that more and more would rather 'people lilke us' left. (this is only one measure in that regard.)

[cosmolinguist]

Absolutely, and thanks for adding that. My argument is by no means complete as I wrote it.

[jojomojo.livejournal.com]

Strongly agreed, it's bullshit. And having done it the other way (on a fiance visa even) I agree about how horribly costly the whole process is. People who bitch about immigrants coming over here taking our jerbs have no idea how bloody hard it is to do legally, into any First World country (with the obvious EU->EU exception, anyway).

[cosmolinguist]

Oh absolutely. There are many reasons we decided it'd be better for me to move here than for him to move there, and one of them is that the U.S. system is even more awful and unfriendly and expensive.

Another thing that winds me up is that a UK spouse of a non-EU person has to prove they make something like £24,700 -- because both halves of the couple are ineligible for benefits for the two years of the spouse visa -- to guarantee they can support both if need be....and yet the DWP says I can't have income-related benefits if I live with a partner who works more than 24 hours a week, which in a minimum wage job would mean about £150/week to support two people.

[demiurgician.livejournal.com]

The worst part is, with the new rules that come into effect tomorrow, I believe (having done it both ways) that the US system is easier, cheaper, and more fair. A few examples:

- The US bases income on poverty levels. This varies by state, as opposed to the UK's decision to that everyone must make 18,600 pounds, regardless of whether they live in Central London or Wigan.

- The US allows joint sponsorship. If the sponsor doesn't make enough money but knows someone who does who will sign the paperwork, you're all good. As of tomorrow the UK will no longer allow third party support - it doesn't matter if your parents are independently wealthy and happy to help, no visa for you.

- In the US the initial, conditional greencard is for two years. If you divorce in that period but are able to prove that A) It was a good-faith marriage or B) Your spouse was abusive, you can still remove conditions and get permanent residency. As of tomorrow, the UK will have an initial visa good for two years, then you must apply for Further Leave to Remain (for, I'm sure, a good thousand quid), followed by Indefinite Leave to Remain only after five years. If, in the meantime, you get divorced, or something happens to your spouse, I do not believe there is any recourse to stay in the country, although I am only 80% certain of that. That means that in theory, if Gary is hit by a bus in four years, I will be forced to leave the home I shared with my husband of nine years, end of.

- The US citizenship test (which is actually a citizenship test) can be taken in several languages, there are exceptions based on age and disability, the test booklet (including a CD!) is free, and there is no extra fee beyond the naturalization fee to take the test. It's also given orally, and most Americans who have passed high school civics would pass it.

You have to work pretty hard to make the US system seem reasonable. Way to go, UK.

[cheshire23.livejournal.com]

Actually, US poverty levels *don't* vary by region, with one minor exception (Alaska and Hawaii have slightly higher standards than the other 48 states), and they really should, and the entire definition of poverty in the US is so effed up I wouldn't even know where to begin.

Agreed on the rest of this.

[barakta]

Absolutely agree with your points about it being racist xenophobic etc. A friend of mine's white South African spouse had enough difficulty with it and they witnessed several instances of non-white people throughout the process being treated REALLY badly and with disdain and sneering, whereas they (both white) got treated with basic civility respect despite the process itself being fail :(

I wonder if it is legal to not provide reasonable adjustments to the test on the grounds of disability. I don't think it is. If you were completely blind they would have to find a way of reading the questions and recording your answers as I assume braille is too complex to learn from scratch for test conditions. Arguably you personally should have been allowed extra reading time as long as the competence standard (proving you knew the stuff) was met. I bet there was nothing of that in the info. Case for indirect discrimination against disabled people I wonder?

And how are newishly immigrated people who don't read and write English supposed to access reading/writing/literacy as to the best of my knowledge a lot of the ESOL stuff has had its funding cut viciously. I think being literate is useful and important - in that being illiterate is hugely hugely disempowering in our 'information society' but literacy goes hand in hand with free, easy, accessible, appropriate, targeted, supportive opportunities to learn and as you say about the important things. I'd want all immigrants to be able to access information about basics like how to get a GP, how bureaucrazy works here [1], how to get access to education, what standards are the norm.

I don't know where the balance between "racist etc" expectation of someone speaking/reading/writing English (or other UK national language) and having immigrants who are disempowered and therefore vulnerable and at risk for not knowing English is. I know it's frustrating working with immigrants or temporary residents who don't speak enough English to understand us or do their studies (I feel they're taken advantage of and we'll take their money and if they fail who cares)... Suspect it's nuanced and requirements don't work as well as incentives and support.

[Getting dragged off PC, will poss come back to this if I remember]

[1] Often international students at my work behave in ways that we find maddening and stressful because that's how it works in their home countries. Trying to explain that turning up, refusing to leave and sitting in our waiting room till the person they want appears then ambushing them is scary and stalky for us and doesn't get them what they want is a slow process. Trying to explain that when we say "X is out of the office" that is a truth and hassling all of X's colleagues by phone also doesn't work as we're not supposed to cover non emergency work of our colleagues cos it's too much. We've also had students who think if we write a letter to the VC for them that they'll waive fee issues and sometimes offer us money - again a delicate situation in explaining 'no we can't it doesn't work, it's illegal, don't do it here or it'll get you into trouble"

[cosmolinguist]

Arguably you personally should have been allowed extra reading time as long as the competence standard (proving you knew the stuff) was met. I bet there was nothing of that in the info.

Definitely not. I remember the info being exceptionally unfriendly: you MUST use a computer and you are allowed ONLY so many minutes and etc.etc. It was like the most puny, power-tripping teacher offering a standardized test to schoolchildren.

Case for indirect discrimination against disabled people I wonder?

Wouldn't surprise me. I didn't seek out any adjustments, figuring I could cope (and I did) but I also in a way didn't want to make trouble, didn't want to do anything that might have any negative effects. However slight the possibility is, when you have so much riding on the results of this test, you have every reason to be meek and well-behaved. And I am sure that contributes to people "failing" unfairly, and just paying more and trying again. It's such a sad thought.

But yeah, would they make the case? Even if they wanted to risk causing a fuss, would they know how the system worked, that making the legal case for discrimination was a thing they could do? Having been kept from accessing any benefits (at least if their visa, like mine, had NO RECOURSE TO STATE FUNDS emblazoned on it), how likely are they to know what rights and support they have?

Of course you're right in that there are disadvantages to not being able to speak/read English, but a one-off set of multiple-choice questions two years into your stay in the UK is not the way to encourage a functional understanding of the language. As you say, put that towards ESOL programs and such, ffs.

[barakta]

Maybe I should email the buggers and find out about the test - cos that's a thing I know the legalities of and it seems wrong that they are not making it clear in the pre-test things. I don't know if they've sorted that with the driving theory either but same principle applies. And yes puts you in horrid disempowered scared to ask for basic rights position :(


Oh I think if (and that's a huge if to be honest - would need to really believe it was worthwhile) we were assessing English we'd need something decent and real - hell better than the Oxford/Cambridge scores I students with because those don't seem to map to the ability of the students to cope with the UK or certainly my workplace context. I'd want it to be gradual and based on reality rather than utter bollocks like kings and queens or whatever.

[cosmolinguist]

I was thinking of you a lot when I wrote it. (I was also thinking you might not want/feel able to read it, and that's fine too.

If you do want or need to talk about any of this, I'm here for you and I'm definitely always on your side. I want to make this process more humane and more reasonable for everyone, but if I could do it by the time it'd have an impact on you, that'd be a huge bonus as far as I'm concerned.

[cosmolinguist]

I think that would be a good test :) I have no use for tennis but note the same phenomenon when I listen to cricket on the radio; no matter how badly the England team has fucked up, there always seems to be a commentator insisting that the string of increasingly implausible events necessary for them to win is bound to start, any second now. Andy Hamilton says in an episode of Old Harry's Game that you can tell an English person by the way they're bound to say "the best in the world" at some point :)

[marjory.livejournal.com]

The glut of questions concerning benefits made it perfectly clear what kind of immigrants they are looking for - i.e. preferably ones who won't trouble the system with claims, especially futile ones. Oh, those crazy immigrants and their benefit-applying ways!

Accessibility and attitude to disability are ever the bugbears. No country seems to want us lot, let alone our own.

I'm fine with there being a requirement to at least comprehend good English before claiming citizenship here, as far as that goes. I could not, in conscience, require this of refugees and asylum seekers who wish to make the transition to citizenship. mostly because the command required bespeaks a certain degree of privilege. I went to Germany through choice and attained a similar level of German comprehension within 2 years, merely because it was polite (I had no intention of becoming a citizen, however) and I had to to be able to function over there. I went beyond that, linguistically, but it took some doing and you may add the excitement of the expense of language lessons to the racket.

I believe that you are right about a lot of this being a moneymaking tool. 750 quid? Holy crap! Then we may add in the cost, both financial and time-wise of study guides, perhaps of study courses, of language classes and materials, all to learn random gubbins off by heart. My general knowledge is good and my mind enquiring, but I can recognise a cram-job when I see one.

They need to scrap the bugger or rethink it from the ground up. That, or else be brutally honest enough to say that they really want well-to-do professionals who are sound of wind and limb and will trouble the government in no way beyond paying lots of taxes.

[ozgirlabroad.livejournal.com]

Oh, it's three years this month since I did my exam and I still remember the horror. There were questions in there on the NHS that even I had to really think about, and my job at the time was writing about NHS services for the NHS.

I swear though that the people sitting either side of me were doing their Life in the UK test in other European languages. Have things changed or I was likely just still delirious from the tail end of the swine flu I had at the time? I must be wrong.

Which reminds of the Australian Dictation Test (http://museumvictoria.com.au/customshouse/customs_history/dictation.asp) which was still used up to the 1960s.

[cosmolinguist]

Hm; maybe they have changed the language thing. I certainly hope so, as it's bloody ridiculous to have it only in English or Welsh. it's coming up to five years now since I took the test, so hopefully that has improved since then (I don't want to google it, I'm a little freaked out just thinking about it, and described that part of Question Time as "triggery," which is something I hardly ever say about myself).

Swine flu? Argh, poor you; as if anything was needed to make such a process even more fun!

I didn't know about the Dictation Test; thanks for that. I was gonna say it's shocking but...really it's not. That's a good website, though; I poked around, looked at some stuff, found this, which is heartbreaking. All those poor bastards, jailed and deported.

[thebustocrookes.livejournal.com]

It's not like you can go to the other British government down the street and get a better deal.

If only there *were* an "other" British Government!

WHilst this "test" etc is clearly nonsense, and more designed to appeal to the prejudices of people in the UK unduly worried about immigration (Daily Mail, UKIP etc) than to address migration needs, I really wish *we* could be "citizens" rather than "subjects. If only...

Links I found interesting for 09-07-2012

[livejournal.livejournal.com]

User nwhyte referenced to your post from Links I found interesting for 09-07-2012 (http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1966822.html) saying: [...] ) Well THAT didn't end where I expected it to! [...]

[inulro.livejournal.com]

Sent here by a friend. I got my Indefinite Leave to Remain back in the mid-90s, when I only had to be here & married & not sponging off the state for a year, and it was free.

I have since been putting off getting citizenship. For 99.9% of my life it's irrelevant -as a Canadian I can vote. I can use the NHS and in theory claim benefits ( though in practice the fact that I have a partner who earns twice what I do makes that also irrelevant). The only difference is in which immigration queue I enter the country.

But. Current plans for world domination invoke moving to another EU country, necessitating EU citizenship. I have till now refused to take the test on the principle that it's full of factual errors, but I'm going to have to suck it up.

Mote worrying for me is the lack of documentation that I have to accompany the immigration form. A lot of that got list when my first marriage went down the toilet, I have no idea where my ex is (nor do I want to) and he probably burned it all anyway.

Also, when I was looking at the form I was out of work, and it asks a lot about job and income. So I'm not clear what stay at home spouses are supposed to do.

In theory there should be no case more straightforward than mine, but I'm still going to need a lawyer to walk me through it.

[redfiona99.livejournal.com]

A friend is going through this nonsense at the minute, and it's such a peculiar range of questions (several of which are wrong/out of date). And the way they're phrased! It's so confusing.

[cosmolinguist]

several of which are wrong/out of date

Oh yeah; this reminds me of one of the ones I had: it was about TV licenses in a shared house. And since I haven't had a TV nor shared a house since I was in college (in the U.S. (where they don't even have TV licenses!), all I could remember about it was that my sister-in-law, who was an estate agent at the time, had happened to mention that this had changed a couple of days before I had to take this test.

The options on that multiple choice question included both what it was changing to and what it'd changed from, and by this point, especially considering how irrelevant this was to me, I couldn't remember which was which. And I had to try to remember the old one, because I was knew there was no way they'd have updated the test (I mean, it's not like we can update things on computers!)...it was just a mess.

Life in the UK: it pays to be uninformed!