..on or around Thu, Mar 20, 2008 at 12:30:34AM +0000, Damian Stewart said: > i just got interrogated for three hours by UK border police. not fun. don't > recommend. > > i got let in but apparently it was touch and go between yes you can come in > and no you have to buy a next-day one-way ticket to NZ (~$5000). and i have > a fixed date of departure which is not recorded on my passport but is > recorded in their computers. (i now have two 'coded stamps'. the first i > didn't know about; the second has 'six months' written on it, which means > 'until 24th of May', because if they wrote '24th of May,' when i have to be > out, i could appeal; so they write six months, and if i'm still here on > 25th of May, the computers will Know, and it has been made quite clear to > me that there will be Trouble.) > > please, please, everyone go and watch the Alfonso Cuaron film Children of > Men. aside from being a beautiful film, it shows the UK T+ 10 years, if > current trends continue. no, it's not an exaggeration. > > NZ is very shielded from this. pay attention: this side of the world is > rapidly slipping into the kind of constant-surveillance fascist nightmare > we normally associate with World War II or George Orwell. keep your papers > on you at all times. you can be asked for them by the police at any time, > for any reason. for your safety, security, and comfort, please purchase the > lifestyle provided, and do not stray from the path well trodden. > > i never understood artworks that were about borders, about transience; and > then i became one of those people, and now i understand. immigration policy > is institutionalised racism. you do not have freedom of movement if you > come from the wrong place. apparently, NZ is the wrong place.
i can sympathise.. i think i told you my story of the hard-nosed border guard at Stansted. looking at my passport, with several trips to the U.K that year, he informed be that i had been secretly living in London for 3 years, that he knew this and that i was returning to my illegitimate home! it took me quite some time to prove to him that i actually lived in Germany. nonetheless, i had to cancel a talk at an academic conference as a result. i now travel to the U.K as a resident of Spain. .. and yes, you are right. there is no 'common wealth' from a U.K perspective, just a common suspicion. it's clear you'd be far better off carrying an American or Swiss passport into the U.K these days. it's my experience that N.Z is increasingly an outsider nation from a U.K perspective, cultural and historical ties now evaporating into an awkward political politeness, at best. "You said your name was... we have met haven't we?". are there really any benefits (work visas etc) being a N.Z'er in the U.K anymore? that'd be an interesting relationship to time-track since WWI. anyway, such rash reactions at the U.K border have to be taken with a grain of iodised salt: the country has gone quite bonkers of late (and they say N.Z has an 'island mentality'). as western countries are increasingly run as geo-strategic corporations (albeit badly), border-patrol becomes an extension of their revenue protection model. 'citizen', in this configuration, designates a swipeable tax (revenue) generator. the U.K and America lead this trend; both countries are pretty openly going this way. (Note: just because it sounds like paranoid dystopic cliche doesn't mean it's not actually happening) from this perspective New Zealand is just not enough of an economic power to be respected yet it is perhaps poor enough - against the grossly inflated Sterling - to potentially add to their widely sung immigration problem. it's likely Kiwis will be feeling this heat at the U.K border for the forseeable future. more generally it is quite clear that post-E.U the U.K is terrified of becoming politically irrelevant, a dusty island empire of colonial projects that cottoned-on to the fact that they were being kept just-sick-enough to need Queen Mum's special care: colonisation as geo-strategic implementation of Munchausen Syndrome. hrrm i digress.. sorry to hear about your trouble there. bear in mind the problem is far from E.U wide. fear-mad countries like Denmark and the U.K have the biggest case of border rabies in my experience, although i've only lived in the former as a resident and seen the shameless 'protection' it affords.. cheers, -- julian oliver http://julianoliver.com http://selectparks.net messages containing HTML will not be read. _______________________________________________ Ada_list mailing list [email protected] http://aotearoadigitalarts.org.nz/
