Foreign Perspectives

Archive for the ‘Relocating’ Category

No, not as an asylum seeker!

We’re following European Directive 2004/38/EC which is the directive which gives European citizens and their family members and dependants the right move to any other European country. In general terms to take advantage of this directive you need to be moving your family from one country to another. For example, if you are only British and are living in the UK then you can’t use this directive to get any residence rights for a non-European wife. However, in the special case of those who count as “people of Northern Ireland” it’s possible for a British citizen to exercise these rights by requiring the UK authorities to consider them to be Irish (see the British-Irish agreement).

Who counts as a “family member or dependant”? Basically it’s:

• the European citizen plus their spouse (or registered partner or partner in a durable [2 years or more] relationship) and
• the direct descendants of either one up to 21 (or older if they are dependant on the parent) and
• the dependant direct relatives in the ascending line of either (ie parents, grandparents, etc.) and
• any other dependant relatives or members of the household of the European citizen.

Which essentially translates as anyone who lives in the house of the European citizen in the country from which they are moving, regardless of their nationality (which paraphrases Articles 2 & 3 of the directive).Most people think they must have a visa to move to another country but if you are one of the people covered by the above paragraph then in fact you don’t courtesy of Article 5, paragraph 4 which lets you prove “by other means” that you are covered by this directive. For example, in our own case Wendy has an expired European Residence Permit in her passport thus proving that the directive applies to her so she doesn’t need a visa and neither does she need to go down the “Non-European citizen” queues at immigration control even though she’s Australian.

Now you might think that you’re sure to need a residence permit but even that’s not the case because  Article 25, paragraph 1 also has the option to “prove by other means” entitlement to the rights granted under this directive and specifically forbids possession of a residence permit to be used as a precondition for the exercise of any rights or completion of any administrative formality. Which means that, in practice, you never need to have the residence permit.

But, what rights does this directive actually give? Well, in practical terms it translates as giving anyone covered by the directive almost all the rights that a national of the country would have with limitations only in areas such as national security (eg you probably couldn’t work as a diplomat) and voting (although the European citizen can vote in local and European elections). Thus the authorities are required to treat Wendy as though she were British and had always been British.

That’s the theory, but how does it work out in practice. Well, Wendy doesn’t get any UK stamps in her passport these days and avoids the massive queues at some airports which simplifies our lives no end as we can all go through the “EU Citizen” immigration queues. She already has her National Insurance number from when we were here before but temporary ones are allocated once you start work in the UK if you don’t have one already. One current complication remains in connection with the doctor (and I suspect the dentist) which is that although the doctor’s office don’t have any problem in treating her, the Central Services Agency (CSA) are still asking for copies of her visa and residence permit which, of course, we can’t provide as we have neither and we just found out this morning that because of that they’ve told the doctor to take her off his list. That’s not really a big problem as worst case scenario from the doctor’s office end is that we fill in a temporary resident form every time we go to the doctor. It does have a potentially major upside in that as the CSA are breaking the law we could get quite a sizeable compensation payment…

So, overall, an easy, legal and free way to live & work in the UK.

One of the slightly peculiar effects of my five year absence is that it takes a while for the name of some people to come to mind that I’ve seen in the local supermarkets.

It’s not that I didn’t recognise Colin [test to see if he’s really reading this!] pretty much instantly, but that it took me AGES to remember his name! Is it just the five year gap, or creeping senility? Funnily enough I remembered David J’s name almost the instant I saw him even though I’ve worked a whole lot more with Colin over the years. Bryan’s a lot easier to remember of course in that I seem to have been constantly bumping into him in Tescos or Sainsburys every time that I’ve been over here.

Anyway, for Colin’s benefit, yes I’m back in NI. Why we’re back right now is down to a whole bunch of reasons that meant early in 2009 was always going to be the best time logistically for us to return and although it might seem a bit of a sudden decision, in fact we’d been aiming to be here since something like two and a bit years ago.

Since I’m “between jobs” in one sense albeit still employed in another (career breaks are confusing things) I’ve been signing on as unemployed for the last few weeks.

One of the key things that you need to do if you want to get what they now call “job seekers allowance” is to look for jobs. Fair enough and indeed that’s how it always should have been as the whole idea behind the organisation concerned was to provide some assistance to tide people over when they were between jobs.

Anyway,  in the absense of a job, so far, at the end of the career break I’ve been taking the opportunity to look around for one. Amazingly enough I found what seemed to be the perfect job last week although on first reading of the requirements it seemed to rule me out. Second read of the actual detail of the requirements though and it was a different matter so I thought I’d apply for it. Snag was that by the time I’d identified it as a serious possibility it was coming up to the time that I needed to “sign on” for the “job seekers” allowance

No problem, sure all I needed to do was to call them and let them know I was in the midst of applying for a job, eh? Well, no, because that was my signing on time they said I MUST come down and do just that. But, isn’t the whole objective of the place to get people into jobs? Yes, but you MUST come down now because we can’t change your signing time for anything was their reply.

As it turned out the application took a lot less time than I’d expected so I was able to do both albeit arriving quite late for the “signing on”.

Seems that the renaming of the place as “jobs & benefits” has left the emphasis on “benefits” rather than getting jobs after all.

Despite us having to go through all kinds of hoops to try and register Wendy with a doctor, it’s been surprisingly easy to get a European Health Card issued.

In fact, all we had to do was to quote a name and address for them to post it to. They took our National Insurance numbers because we had them to hand but didn’t need them.

That’s pretty odd when you think about it as it means we can bill expenses from abroad for Wendy to the very health system that won’t register her to be treated locally!

Although we’ve been quite busy trying to get settled back into life in the UK in the last month or so we’ve not been able to say much about it thanks to a lack of broadband access until today so there’s a heap of catching up to be done on the blog!

One of the more taxing aspects has proved to be the business of getting us back into the health system.

We figured that this would be really simple as we already had national health numbers and were going to be signing up with the same doctor as we’d had five years ago but it wasn’t quite so simple as that as it turned out and we’ve still not quite completed the formalities even after a month of trying!

Getting treated is very easy and we’ve been catching up with missed vaccinations for the kids and suchlike over the last month. However, the business of actually registering with the doctor was where the problems started. To begin with we started off with the normal forms for re-registering all of us except John who was born in France and therefore hadn’t been registered here before. It turns out that in fact since we’d all been living overseas we all had to fill in the form we’d initially put him on and also to provide birth certificates for everyone as well which is fair enough in some ways as an ID requirement.

Completing the “from overseas” forms wasn’t quite so simple though. For one thing, if you’re not currently paying National Insurance contributions (which we aren’t) then you need to be claiming Job Seekers Allowance so that in turn meant a trip to the local Job Seekers office to sign on for that. One complication with that is that I don’t think I’m entitled to Job Seekers Allowance as I’m on a career break but I’ll see about that when I finally get the interview for it this Friday.

A week or so later we received an “interesting” phone call from the Central Services Agency (CSA) who are the people who deal with the back office handling of putting you on the register for the doctor. Despite me writing on the form that Wendy (Australian) didn’t need a visa or work permit because she was entitled to a European Residence Permit, they phoned up asking for the visa and work permit to be sent. Seeing as we don’t need them and can’t get them for her (because we can’t be required to have them) they were a bit put out and had to call us back after checking with their supervisor. That second conversation was even more interesting as it was obvious that they haven’t a clue how they are legally required to assess the right of residence for anyone in even the simplest of cases…

1. If you’re French they register you with no further proof than your passport. Actually, the French (along with all other Europeans except the Irish) need to have a job (or to get one within three months) to gain a right of residence (excluding special cases).
2. If you’re Bulgarian they require all kinds of documents. In fact, as of January 2008 they are required to treat Bulgarians in the same way as other Europeans (except the Irish).
3. If you’re not European they require a visa and work permit. Well, normally that would be the case but seeing as Wendy and I have been together for quite a few years now she’s entitled to a European Residence Permit and had one when we were here last time. With said permit they are required to treat her as though she were British and had always been British and are therefore required to register her for medical care. Actually, since we were last here we found out that although she’s eligible for that permit she’s not required to get it but the authorities are required to treat her as though she did have it.

Why “except the Irish”? Well, the UK and Ireland are in what’s called the Common Travel Area which means that there’s no passport control between the two countries and that citizens of either have the right to move to the other (with or without working). That predates the formation of Europe by many decades and means that Irish citizens must be treated differently than other Europeans in many respects notably the absence of a requirement to have work to enable them to live in the UK.

Slightly separately from that, courtesy of the Good Friday Agreement most Northern Ireland people (it’s defined in a peculiar way but basically means anyone that’s British or Irish and has been born in Northern Ireland) have the right to be treated as British or Irish or both as and when they choose. Apparently the CSA aren’t aware that I can insist on them treating me as Irish exclusively should I wish to do so and for the purposes of Wendy’s eligibility for the European Residence Permit I need to be able to require people to treat me as Irish.

However, the most laughable comments were when I said that she had these rights courtesy of Freedom of Movement legislation… in their mind that was freedom to move around Europe, not actually to stay anywhere. In fact, the whole point of the freedom of movement legislation was to allow people to move around and live anywhere they wanted to in Europe. She then went on to say that European law didn’t apply in Northern Ireland. That was on a day when the farmers were queuing up to claim their European payments which are obviously issued under European law!

We’re still waiting to hear back from them.