![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cosmolinguistIt'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,"![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
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 frommarjory.
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.
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.
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.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.
Instead, Conservative ministers want to tell new migrants that Britain is “historically” a Christian country with a “long and illustrious history”
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.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-07-08 07:04 pm (UTC)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.
(no subject)
Date: 2012-07-08 07:43 pm (UTC)