Scottishhh Posted January 2, 2014 Posted January 2, 2014 Hello fellow freedom lovers, It seems like an eternity since I was last on this site. I don't know what the 'topic' really is for what I want to say, but I would like to share my recent experiences with some relatively like minded people. The world can be a lonely place for an anarchist. So, in October I got married. I am super happy about my relationship with my wife. She is the best. And she herself is not the problem. The problem is that I committed the cardinal sin of marrying a rival gang member. You see, my wife is American, and I am Scottish. Not the original West Side Story, but you get the idea. To cut a long story short, the visa process in the UK is now extremely convoluted, expensive, and deliberately confusing. After months of reading the forums, reading the small print reading the forms, we started to make our application. Then as far as I can tell, the UK Border Agency changed a few details and forms. So we made our application online for a marriage visa. This would allow my wife to come and stay in the UK for 6 months so that we could be married, and then once she was here we would apply for her temporary residence status for 2 years. In theory that would allow her to live and work in the UK as my spouse. So this was always known as a 'fiancee' visa. It is now known as a marriage Visa. We didn't know that there are two types of Marriage Visa. They are stamped as 'Marriage', or 'Marriage-Visitor'. So we filled out the paperwork, made our appointments, paid our £1000 ($1600 USD) appointment fee, to make the application in person. So, we went to a prison style detention centre in Glasgow. It is literally crawling with thug like security guards, and all of the immigration officers were behind bullet proof glass, for obvious reasons. The incompetence of the guards was the first omen that struck me. We went through the pat down and metal detector just like at an airport. Except this guard who searched my bag removed a leatherman multi tool/knife from my bag. I thought 'great, here we go'. But to my astonishement, the guard said, 'oh wow, thats a nice tool, etc, and started showing to the other guards, before handing it back to me on the other side of the gate 'Great Leatherman Pal'. Unbelievable. Anyway, we were shoved from window, to window to be interrogated by various thug-aucrats. Nobody really cared about our marriage certificate (We had a beautiful god-free marriage, but we were forced to at least have a city registrar do our ceremony in Edinburgh. It hurt deeply for me, to ask any kind of permission to marry. Let alone, only be allowed to marry in 'city approved locations'. But I had no choice but to play the statist game.) Instead, they were more interested in me proving my income is greater than the 'legal minimum required to sponsor a spouse as a resident'. This is a recent requirement in the UK. In any case, I was not worrried because our marriage was legitimate in the eyes of the state, and my income is double the minimum requirement even after tax. So I brought my contracts of employment, and salary statements for the past 18 months as proof. But that wasn't enough. I had to leave the immigration centre, and run around town for an hour to get bank statement s for the last 2 years, stamped as authentic by the bank. Of course my question was 'why didn't you tell us that requirement on the form or on the website?'. She looked at me, like I was an idiot. Her reply was 'How else do I know that your payslips actually mean you are recieving money?'. Anyway, after an epic run around town, and coming back through security, they sat us down and told us, that because our fiance visa had one little word extra on it, my wife had to leave the country. We replied, 'but the fiance visa no longer exists. This is a marriage visit visa. Now we're married, she's applying to stay'. Imagine a Big 'Game-Show sty;e noise of incorrectness'. They started trying to explain to us like we were idiot children that 'you got the same visitor visa that madonna got when she visited Scotland for her wedding, what you need is the other one'. Rage building. So, what do we do now? Well, you leave the country and apply again. Which form do we fill out? The same one you have in your hand now. Right. How long does that take? Oh, nobody knows. What? Yeah, 2 months, up to 8 months, no guarantees. OK. So we have no way to appeal this? Here's an email address where you can complain, but the error was yours, so it's unlikely you have a valid complaint. Excuse me? Yes. OK, but your website specifically says 'we cannot tell you which form to fill out'. So how were we supposed to know? I'm sorry, thats all I can tell you. (THIS WAS THE MOST GALLING BIT:) "If it's any consolation, the marriage visa used to be the easiest one to get until quite recently, but now they're cracking down on dole (welfare) cheats" Right. So I said, 'but my wife has £12k in her checking acct, I have £6k, and my salary more than double meets your requirements. You are telling me that she will be kidnapped and forced away from her husband for getting one word wrong on a form, that you guys invented. So she and I have no right to be together, and even a government sponsored marriage certificate means nothing any more. 'I'm sorry, that's the rules', was the predictable reply. My wife was in tears, and I was shaking at this point. Rather than take someone hostage with my trusty Leatherman, as I apparently DID have the right to do, we dragged our Non-Aggressive arses off out the door. It was at this point my wife told me, that whilst I was running between banks trying to get evidence for my 'Application-Not-To-Be-Kidnapped' form, that a South African (White) woman was sitting in the window next to us explaining 'why she had been arrested so many times whilst she was here on a student visa'. Literally, her response was 'It wasnt my fault, they just came into my house and set me up. My wife was shaking and crying and saying 'I don't understand? If they government gives out welfare, but they don't want me to take welfare, then WHY DONT THEY JUST 'NOT GIVE ME WELFARE'? Exactly. And here is kind of my tralking point in this post. This was as clear an epiffany as I have ever had. They create all these bullshit departments, so that when they do something bad that causes you pain, they can call it 'Immigration'. When they do something you like, that gives you relief when you're in another form of pain, they call it 'The National Health Service', or 'Welfare', or 'Free Shit'. Just like Zeus blames Thor when it rains, or whatever. You get all these little subdivisions of government departments, to obfuscate the concept of 'Government / Governance by force'. Just like the bible bashers say, well I like this little bit of the bible, but ignore the rest of it, so I cannot question the concept. And none of it made any sense. My wife literally had her dream job, lined up and waiting for her in Edinburgh, managing a bridal store. There is some tax-paying economic value they are missing out on right now, because of their retarded policy. Anyway, I work offshore in North Sea Oil. This all happened on the Thursday of that week. I was due to go back to Sea on the Monday. My wife had to book a flight home for the sunday night. I had to strip down our apartment, and move everything into my folks house for storage. At the same time all weekend I had to look into a green card application for me to go the US now, since it is the only way my wife and I can both continue to work and earn money. She had abstained from working for over 12 months, so she could be with me in the UK. The stress of moving out of my apartment, and preparing to go back to Sea, in the middle of a North Sea winter, was so much for me, I had my first panic attack. I went to hospital, in Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. A prestigious looking building, until you get inside the emergency room of this Socialised healthcare hell-hole, and find bloody bandages under your seat in the waiting room, the hallways FULL of people in beds with no ward to go to, folk in wheelchairs pissing and shitting all over the floor, and the sound beeps turning to solid tones all around you. Truly, a bad fucking weekend for us. Get one word wrong on a form, and god help you. Anyway, my free market god-send of an employer is very kindly now paying for my flights to the US every month. I have the lofty privilege of 'Visitng' my wife, for up to three months at a time now, under the US Visa Waiver Program. Last week I sent in my application for a Green Card, and my wife has kindly spent half of her savings setting us up in a lovely apartment in Charleston. So now, I'm living without the right to 'work' in the same land as my wife. This obviously adds all kind of risks and stresses to our plans on having a baby at the moment. (Yes, Charleston, SC. My father btw is an Alex Jones fan, and even after knowing that I'd been hospitalised the night before with a strong panic attack, spent our last few hours together as we gutted my Scottish apartment, telling me exactly how, if I make it through the airport without being irradiated in the US, then I'm just gonna get Nuked in Charleston. Way to show some empathy Dad ) The upside of all of this trauma, is simply this: My wife officially posted on FB 'I'm now an Anarchist'. So that is my story. Here is my question. To what extent do our 'statist priestly class', use the ideals/tricks of polytheism, to manipulate our emotional attachments to government? And how does epistomology help us deal with this trauma, of threats of violence inflicted upon us at every turn in modern society? I think seeing violence and tax farming for what it truly is, has really helped salvage the first year of my marriage, and helped reassure my wife that we are not 'deserving' of such treatment. Knowing for sure, that injustice has been done to us, and what caused it all, was very little to do with our own actions, has truly, truly helped our emotional survival. Does Philosophy help you survive?
TDB Posted January 5, 2014 Posted January 5, 2014 Hey Scottishhh, Thanks for telling your story, though it was not pleasant to read it. I am angry that the bureaucrats gave you such a trial. How can people behave like that, and then call themselves "public servants" with a straight face? I hope your new situation is more comfortable, and that you have better luck with US immigration. Regarding your questions: I don't know much about polytheism, but your question reminded me of a chapter from a book titled "The ProbLem of Political Authority" by Michael Huemer. He spent the first several chapters attacking the idea that the state is justified in giving commands and the citizens or subjects are obligated to obey. Then in chapter 7 (I think) he gave a brilliant analysis of the psychology behind obedience to the state, including a discussion of the Stanford prison experiment, the Milgram experiment, and analysis of the symbolism used in architecture of state capitols. He did a talk at porcfest on pretty much the same topic. As for whether philosophy will help you with trauma or survival, I think Stef would probably remind you of the "reward" given to Socrates by the city of Athens. Hmmm, that's not so encouraging, is it? Okay, let me try harder. You have become interested in the truth. Would you trade that for a comfortable lie? You have set out on the path of philosophy, and that has made happiness, integrity, and worthwhile relationships more achievable. If we concentrate on the negative things that surround us, we can overwhelm ourselves. But there are also many hopeful signs and opportunities. Don't be discouraged, be determined. Cheers, TDB
Dylan Lawrence Moore Posted January 5, 2014 Posted January 5, 2014 This doesn't answer your questions, but I just wanted to point out in case of future bureaucratic problems. From what I've been able to see with my time in bureaucracies, incredibly uneducated assholes are hired to fill the bottom ranks (as if you didn't notice) who literally do not know what the bureaucracy is "capable of". Meaning: I'm assuming you and your wife could have been whisked through that hellhole had you been speaking to the right person, and the way it seems to get a hold of this "right person" is to demand supervisors and threaten complaint forms or reports or whatever to the person you're dealing with. They're all high and mighty and powerful until the spotlight of responsibility falls onto them, in which case they slink away under the closet like the cockroaches that they are. If you tried all that and it didn't work, then I apologize for wasting your time. I wanted to write it just in case. -Dylan
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