UK Immigration Mistreatment

Hey, I'm not the one fucking up the world economy!

 

Yeah Barc0de, sell some of your dev stuff and help your fellow greeks out!

 

Strange, I always thought you were some Japanese guy who loved posting on this forum.. Guess I was wrong, haha. Sorry about the mistake. I couldn't resist posting when you replied >.>

 

What, the SNES-CD unit? no way, I can buy my own private island with that money and make my own government. You're all invited, free coke and hookers!

 

How is your immigration policy? I don't want to be sent back when I arrive on a tight budget by your hooker border patrol....

 

Japanese people are genetically predetermined to fear any type of forum that is

-easily legible
-uses software other than those developed sometime around the birth of CGI
-has a community of more than 20 or less than 2 million.

 

It's drug test on entry. If you fail to prove that you're high you fail to get in, so make sure to get enough stuff from your country. We don't want any illegal pot smokers on my island.

 

I'm sorry, you just failed yourself right there. Chavs never grow up

What, machine gun jubblies, Austin Powers style? :thumbsup:

C-Kronos, noone's jumping to conclusions. You asked our opinion, but failed to give sufficient information. I asked in my first post whether you had a record (merely asking, don't take offence) to ascertain as to why they may have stopped you. As you didn't reply, I merely tried asking again as it is an important point. Again, don't take offence, but the only people I would expect to ignore that question are the guilty.

From my point of view, I wasn't jumping to conclusions or belittling you - merely pointing out that your decision to come into the country without sufficient money (and pointing out WHY it was insufficient - regardless of your trust in this girl things could go tits up and you'd be without a place to stay) was somewhat naive. Incidentally, I have seen people I have constant contact with be duped by people they thought they could trust, and they weren't actually there. All those Nigerian scammers who buy things off eBay give addresses (in the UK often - look up the p-p-p-powerbook case) where they CAN pick up goods. Not saying your girlfriend is a scammer, merely that it IS possible that you could have ended up stranded. Also, you're right - we don't know your situation... but how can we if you don't explain it properly?

Anyway, I would suggest not asking people's opinions on a public discussion forum if you don't want to hear their answers. Welcome to an intelligent debate - feel free to sit down and discuss, otherwise you know where the door is.

 

As other people have said, if you never met someone then intend to stay with them for several weeks with a low amount of money, the immigration officer's concern is going to be what happens if you meet and don't like each other. What then? Where do you stay and how do you get home? You say her family said it would be fine to stay, but that is because they believe it will work out for you and her. But what fi she doesn't want you there? The family will ask you to leave. The money is insufficient for that situation and thus the UK government would have to pay to deport you back to the USA and deal with all the paper work and beauracy that accompanies that venture.

So in the end, though you feel hard done by (probably rightly so in this instance) and you are certain it would have worked out, you just cannot be sure and the officer was following protocol for that situation.

Did you mention to the original officer that you had not yet met the girl? If you did, this was probably the reason he stopped you. All immigration officers are strict and hard line. They have to be for their job. I don't think the UK is any worse that anywhere else. My wife experienced hard treatment when she visited Greece and as I mentioned before, I did when I visited the USA. It's just the way it is.

 

I've only had three issues with immigration in the past, one was with America, one was with Australia (well I had two issues) and the other was with Kuwait..

First one was arriving in Australia and filling the card saying I was staying for 5 months as I misread how long I could stay being a UK citizen (I thought it was 6 months as I had stayed in Hong Kong for that length of time) it wasn't until I left that I found out that I had overstayed. I kept asking why if I wasn't allowed to stay for that long why no one flagged this up when I was entering the country as I was asked how long I was staying and it was on the entry card when I came into the country... that seemed to annoy them... normally most countries will question you if you do state you are going to stay longer then your visa allows you too. The short stay business visa I had got was electronic and done by my place of work so I had nothing in my passport to tell me how long I could stay and the entry stamp told me nothing too...

When I did get my passport back after waiting 20 minutes and being questioned for 20, I was told I was excluded from entering the country until 2012.. except as most of my work is with state or local government authorities I can still apply for a visa and the exclusion of me entering the country is lifted... In fact I am going back to Australia next month... with my visa being approved although I have a fairly large pay increase to get the visa. :thumbsup:

The second problem I had was with leaving Sydney, I was in Brisbane and had to go to Sydney for a meeting, after the meeting I was checking into my flight to go back to Tokyo, except as I didn't have a ticket leaving Tokyo the airline refused to let me check in. I argued that I had been to Japan at least 17 times in the last 6 years without any problems and I was waiting for a ticket to leave Tokyo to go to my next port of call of Taiwan, but they still refused to let me board. I pointed out that they let me enter Australia and the visa I had would expire in a few days and I would be overstaying and as they let me enter the country they would have to repatriate me anyway. They held their ground, so I had to buy a ticket from some remote part of Japan to some remote part of south korea just to board my flight (I had a meeting in 2 days so couldn't miss it...) as my debit card refused to process the fairly high price of about $2000 aud for a fully refundable ticket I had to buy a $400 aud non refundable ticket that I never used. :dammit:

I got refused entry to Kuwait as my passport has an Israli stamp in it, still didn't really bother me.

 

Mine too! Maybe we were seperated at birth!

 

I did this in Japan by a few days b/c of my trip. I planned on applying for an extension as I came about a week early for a 3-month study abroad. You can imagine how that turned out.

 

So true! The amount of BBS style forums in Japanese is amazing. They look so messy and such a pain to follow!

 

What's your immigration policy on coming to "see my girlfriend"? I'm not interested if it isn't a box of condoms and a pat on the back to have fun.

:fresh:

 

As she won't be in this newly-founded country yet, you might have to go and see HIS girlfriend!

 

I m friends with all good looking girls