Immigration and settlement in the United Kingdom

On 9 June 2011, Immigration Minister Damian Green set out a proposal to abolish the link between temporary migration and permanent settlement in the United Kingdom. Specifically, the Home Office intends to reclassify visas as temporary and permanent for workers outside of the EEA. Most current work/study visas would fall under temporary; reserving permanent settlement for a select few immigrants entering with employee-sponsored and ancestry-based qualifications. The proposed changes are the latest in successively more restrictive measures to immigration policy in the United Kingdom.

Leave to remain

Currently, the United Kingdom grants a migrant working or studying a specific period of “leave to remain”, during which they are entitled to claim temporary residency. At the end of this time, a person may choose to renew their visa or switch to a more appropriate route — for example, a student or spouse seeking entitlement to work. After five years of continued residency, immigrants may then apply for “indefinite leave to remain” (ILR), provided they continue to meet the necessary skill requirements. While ILR is still a step removed from citizenship, it does grant permanent settlement in the UK and full access to state services. The aforementioned consultation seeks to define, at the onset of a visa application, which visas are temporary. Workers on temporary visas will not have the option to apply for ILR.

The previous, Labour government introduced the current tiered working visa system in 2008. It is now all but extinct. The Home Office, in the waning years of Gordon Brown, made incremental restrictions to tiered visas by increasing the skill requirements of incoming workers. Following the election of the Liberal Democrat / Conservative coalition, the government has systematically dismantled the visa system. The highest privileged working visa — the Tier 1 Highly Skilled Migrant — closed on 6 April 2011. Tier 4, the student visa, was significantly altered the same month in parallel to closing of the Tier 1 Post-study working visa.

The Home Office states that 84,000 migrants from outside the European Economic Area were granted indefinite leave to remain in 2010 via employment routes, a 17% increase from totals in 1997 (a year apparently relevant as it was the start of the three-term Labour government). Oft quoted reasons for reducing migration include the additional strain on services and loss of skilled jobs.

Theresa May, the Home Secretary, has made it clear that the United Kingdom intends to block the flow of immigrants from outside the EEA to as few people as legally possible.

Labor

We want the brightest and best workers to come to the UK, make a strong contribution to our economy while they are here, and then return home.

Damian Green

The Home Department addresses immigrants as “workers”. The underlying rationale is that visa holders have come to the UK to advance their work and careers. This is fair reasoning. However, the assumption that people are here only to work is deeply flawed. Green ignores the strong cultural and social ties that immigrants inevitably form. Adopted homes, however fleeting, still bind. Expecting immigrants to arrive, work for a bit then neatly pack their bags disregards the life that work is bundled within. Five years can be a lifetime of experience and learning; of friendship, of love, of cultural embrace.

The proposal makes no care for these links to community; coldly rational, it either denies the existence of friendship and possibility outside of work or expects the swift burning of bridges. Damian Green’s words amplifies an understanding that people are resources: temporary bodies to fill temporary roles.

Contribution

In striking contrast, Michael Bloomberg, mayor of New York, is pushing an initiative to reform immigration in the United States, acknowledging the essential role of immigrants in America’s economic and cultural growth. Bloomberg proposes more temporary and permanent working visas for highly skilled migrants, new entrepreneur visas and expanded green cards.

We will not remain a global superpower if we continue to close our doors to people who want to come here to work hard, start businesses, and pursue the American dream. The American dream cannot survive if we keep telling the dreamers to go elsewhere.

Michael Bloomberg

His initiative is a stark difference to the policies of the coalition government in the United Kingdom, and indeed to opinion in many parts of the United States. Yet his honesty and openness hits at a truth that many have been content to ignore. The immigration debate so often focuses on illegal persons that it rarely recognizes the economic and intellectual boon that stems from legal paths of migration. Globalization has allowed business and innovation to flourish, yet our borders are being closed to a generation of makers and thinkers.

Choice

The proposal, if passed, will come into effect in 2014. It is unclear whether immigrants already in the United Kingdom would be affected by the changes. The Home Office is keeping an open consultation until 9 September.

I did not move to the United Kingdom with the intent to settle permanently. The prospect of permanent settlement, however, is incentive for me to stay.

I have lived in this country for two years and already have a sincere appreciation for my work experience, my friends, the culture, this city. I understand how difficult it could be in one year to leave all of that behind. The same decision three years on is a choice I would hope to earn: a choice I believe all legal immigrants deserve.

Design for the changing web

Conversations

Our interaction with the web has fundamentally shifted. Online content is accessible through a ever-expanding and myriad range of devices in a nearly unlimited set of surroundings. The conversation is no longer concerned with desktop or mobile users. Consider: a person might read a news article on their smartphone while at work, with limited connectivity, as a workaround to company security policies. Someone else might view a slideshow of images, listen to audio or watch a video on a notebook or tablet while making the daily commute. It is now an incorrect and potentially disadvantageous mindset that makes assumptions based on device capability or context.

Instead, the conversation has moved from the limitations of device and technology to the adaptability afforded with design that is responsive. Pixel-perfect layout in favor of flexible structure with fluid content and media. Design in search of commonalities, not differences.

Response

A Brief History

One year ago, Ethan Marcotte published an article titled Responsive Web Design (A List Apart, 25 May 2010). It has proven hugely influential and a fundamental starting point for responsive design strategy. His central argument is that while it is often tempting to develop mobile-specific versions of a website for a client with sandboxed and curated domains, the approach can quickly become a tremendous burden. How many devices do you specialize for? Which mobile browser do you target, at what resolution and what screen size? Before long, a developer could be asked to provide completely different experiences for a dozen devices: catered solutions for an iPhone, HTC running Android or Windows 7, a Blackberry. The solution is to adapt to the one thing that is predictable and unchanging: viewing size.

Rather than tailoring disconnected designs to each of an ever-increasing number of web devices, we can treat them as facets of the same experience. We can design for an optimal viewing experience, but embed standards-based technologies into our designs to make them not only more flexible, but more adaptive to the media that renders them. In short, we need to practice responsive web design. Ethan Marcotte

Consistency of experience

Experience is key. Users change the way they access content frequently; numerous times daily. We expect the user interface to remain consistent, if not exact as we move from desktop to mobile, video game console to tablet. As a sort of testament to this need, Facebook has recently announced the rollout of one unified interface for all 250 million of its mobile site users.

Fluid Design & Media Queries

How does a website become responsive? HTML and CSS are the building blocks of the web: the structure to hold our rich content and the styling essential to bring it to life. Historically, CSS has supported a method for scoping presentation to devices with media types — a way of adapting stylesheets for screen, print, or handheld devices. These are, however, quite limited and ill-fitting as the definition of what is appropriate for each becomes less obvious.

As Ethan Marcotte explains, the upcoming CSS3 specification includes a very powerful method of querying device characteristics. These expressions, or Media Queries, check for the conditions of specific media features. A media query could, for example, inquire on the current width of a browser, the maximum or minimum screen size of a portable device, aspect-ratio, color, resolution or device orientation. By preparing a stylesheet to adapt to the changing conditions of a visual or tactile device, websites become truly responsive.

One thousand views

It isn’t a great photo.

Poor composition, haphazard arrangement; the orange and white check pattern of the bedspread beneath it all.

Impressed with the amount of quality items in the tote bag — posters, notebooks, stickers, candies, graphics and papers — I hastily arranged everything into a sort of aesthetic garbage pile and snapped off two shots. It was a moment of documentation, if anything.

Weather-stained thoughts

This is my Moleskine notebook. I have a number of Moleskines in any number of formats and sizes, but this is the only one that matters. I purchased it four years ago. It contains notes, sketches, recipes, hand-drawn maps, addresses, phone numbers and countless half-formed thoughts written in moments of inspiration or intoxication. So much information, in fact, that I have exhausted the available writing surface. The notebook is set to be retired this week; an identical Moleskine will replace it. The pages of the new notebook will slowly fill, the spine will deteriorate and everything will start anew.

Human Resource

What is a resource?

a useful or valuable possession or quality of a country, organization or person

Cambridge University Press

a stock or supply of money, materials, staff, and other assets that can be drawn on by a person or organization in order to function effectively

Oxford English Dictionary Press

To many, the understanding of resources has been in the context of raw materials: oil, minerals, currency and other tradable commodities. The definitions above appear vague enough to accommodate both the traditional idea of resources and more modern appreciations. If we take some liberty with the definitions I could, in fact, be “a valuable asset of an organization”. Unfortunately, the word asset itself is tricky, referring to either positive virtues and strengths or conversely, property and goods. A “useful possession drawn on by a person or organization in order to function effectively”? Less appealing.

In conversation, we speak of needing “[x amount of resources] for [a particular task, function or result]” eg “one barrel of oil for production of twenty gallons of petrol”. Accordingly, we could assign “eight developers and one designer for completion of this project”. This likely has roots in labor as part of the factors of production, the idea of human capital.

Closed doors

Home Secretary Theresa May announced on 23 November that the United Kingdom’s Tier 1 General Migrant visa route will close April 2011. The decision is one of many changes to immigration policy under the new coalition government. The justification is such that one-third of migrants accepted for a highly skilled visa actually end up in low-skilled work. In 2009, the UK approved my Tier 1 General Migrant visa application. It is a lengthy, difficult process aimed at drawing so-called highly skilled workers to emigrate to the UK. I have made a decent time of it so far; I am in the two-thirds percentage who have successfully found highly skilled work.

Immigration policy is an incredibly complex issue and I suspect living through an upheaval of the law will affect my own views concerning immigration in the United States. There are, of course, fundamental differences between migrants living in a country legally to those who have made a life illegally. However, the issue becomes clouded on both sides in calling for deportation or stricter rules whilst already trying to make a life for yourself in a country you aren’t a born citizen of.

It’s unsettling to see the door I walked through sealed off behind me. This isn’t the first change to the application. One month after my approval, the government set the visa skill requirements to a level I could never have applied to. I felt extraordinarily fortunate at the time — now, all the more.

Vanilla soy milk powder, nutmeg.

I’ve always felt that repetitive writing is one of the more effective methods for quick memorization of information. In reviewing a cooking recipe, I wrote a list of the necessary ingredients. Comparing against the stock in the cupboard, I then made a checkmark next to the items I already had available. There were nineteen ingredients total; twelve were missing. In my haste to go the shop before it closed, I forgot the list. Halfway there, in a moment of decision on whether to push forward or turn back for the list, I quickly typed out the ingredients I could remember into Simplenote on my iPhone. Confident that the list was fairly complete, I continued on.

Returning to my flat afterwards, I compared the two lists fully expecting a few discrepancies. Remarkably, there were none.

I suspect this method is not bulletproof — accuracy would likely drop with larger and more detailed amounts of information over a longer span of time between writing and recall. However, perhaps worth consideration on your next trip to the market.

Warmth

I remain unconvinced that connections sustained online can ever hold real value.

There are extraordinary cases, as with anything. Largely however, we are building and maintaining superficial and haphazard relationships.

I have more often found inspiration in fleeting, chance encounters; moments of genuine intimacy. We are pouring our lives into empty boxes.

Knowledge sharing is something altogether different.

Excessive voyeurism and exhibitionism building towards a sort of paranoia and neurosis, primal need for acceptance.

We forget warmth and affection.

Revisions, a flower shop

Regardless of the thousands of breadcrumbs we have crumbled in the wake of our ever-present, ever-tracking digital world individuals are still blank canvases. If you have exercised any modicum of privacy in your public life it is still remarkably easy — last stop, this town — to start over.

…that isn’t necessarily the point. We take the words of others for granted. Yes, over time we expand our understanding and solidify the histories we’ve learned. Largely, however, we accept what each other say as truth.

She was a florist — mostly arrangements, not so much reselling. She freelanced, odd jobs here and there. Most of the flowers came from local markets. I first saw her picking flowers from the bodega on Spring Street — or was it Prince? They were a brilliant yellow. I was wearing headphones (as always) and Neil Young’s “Heart of Gold” was playing — cheeky I know, but it’s true. Songs are rarely random anyway — large bundles of songs curated to appear at seemingly opportune times, eventually. I remember it was pissing down rain, windy. New York pulling out of winter, pushing into spring. I didn’t talk to her that day, just watched.

We ended the relationship in the same shop, arguing as we moved through the aisles; throwing words at each other as we tossed avocados and tomatoes into a hand basket. It felt like a cliché, a heated public discussion that only seem to happen in films. She left, I finished and paid at the checkout. The cashier, slow and apathetic.

Not a word of this is true.
The imaginative amongst us construct fascinating, intricate stories. How often do the mundane details of a day resemble fiction?

October

I’m intrigued by coincidence and parallel events, markers in a life otherwise lacking in obvious direction.

Two years ago today I began a holiday without any expectation or serious thought. I left after ten days full of possibility and uncertainty.

Twitter, 4 October 2010

This week I learned that the artist that had unknowingly provided me the soundtrack to what would prove to be quite an important holiday to the UK had since released a new album. I discovered this two years to the day of the trip. Whether that is coincidence or a plea for significance is left to question. Either way, the music I listen to this week will be the continuation of those moments in two thousand and eight.

Nostalgia is often a sentimental desperation, a dwelling on the past that creates regrets and unnecessary analysis of what may or may not have been. However, I think there are moments worth remembering; milestones for comparing past expectations against current reality. It seems that we are always pulling aside the branches, trying to reconcile our expectations with the present, when largely nothing matches our expectations. Perhaps there is wisdom in reading the differences; clarity through the choices made.

The music reminds me that I ambled towards this present with little idea of whether it was possible — or quite often, whether it was a good idea. There may comfort in the reminder that there is often possibility in uncertainty.

Mark Mitchell

Notes