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| Subject: Member of John Howard's staff refused UK visa | |
Author: Ian (Australia) | [ Next Thread |
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] Date Posted: 12:25:35 01/20/05 Thu Sydney Morning Herald January 20, 2005 An adviser to Prime Minister John Howard has been refused a British visa after being offered a job in the Conservative Party's election campaign. Alexander Drake was asked to head the opposition's regional media campaign for this year's British election and work under another former Howard staffer, Lynton Crosby. But British newspaper The Independent reported the Home Office rejected Drake's application for a working visa, shortly before former home secretary David Blunkett was forced to quit over his role in fast-tracking a visa for his lover's Filipino nanny. "The Home Office turned me down because they said a British person could do the job," Drake told The Independent. "But that doesn't make sense, experienced people are at a premium during an election. "As far as Blunkett's concerned, I guess I needed to brush up on my nannying skills or something." The Home Office would not comment on the case. Drake lodged an appeal but ran out of patience with the drawn-out process and turned down the job offer. He is back in Australia. "There's only so long you can have your life up in the air, so I'm staying here," he told The Independent from Australia. [ Next Thread | Previous Thread | Next Message | Previous Message ] |
| [> Subject: It's not the first time the Home Office have played political games with our immigration system... | |
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Author: Dave (UK) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 12:31:44 01/20/05 Thu This demonstrates just how much our Civil Service has been politicised, and emphasises just how corrupt this regime has become. An absolute disgrace! [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> Subject: Yet a Frenchman or German would have had no trouble getting in to the UK. There should be no visa requirements from the Commonwealth, especially the realms. | |
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Author: Jim (Canada) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 14:21:50 01/20/05 Thu [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |
| [> [> Subject: Possibly. | |
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Author: Ed Harris (London) [ Edit | View ] |
Date Posted: 15:25:44 01/20/05 Thu To be honest, I think that the issue here is that the job which he wanted was not one which the PolitBuro in Whitehall could countenance, not that he was Australian. After all, there are thousands of Austrlians here at any one time and all of them do jobs which "could be done by a British person", or, for that matter, an Albanian, Peruvian or Icelandic. The idea that someone who has secured a job here can not be let in on the grounds that there are still unemployed British people is not admissable as a reason for refusing a visa, otherwise there would be zero immigration, from Europe, the Commonwealth or anywhere else, unless there were full employment already, which there has never been. I admit that there have been several high-profile ghastly cases of Canadians and other Britons being escorted to an aeroplane for Ottowa by immigration officials, past queues of people from Montenegro coming the other way and having their fake passports rubber-stamped, but this is not like that. This is a case of manipulating the immigration system in the case of one individual whom the government disliked for purely political reasons. [ Post a Reply to This Message ] |