One Woman’s Journey to British Citizenship

One thing that I plan to cover more and more as time goes on is the process of moving to and settling in the UK. It’s a process that is not simple and can be very complicated.

One of my pipe dreams is to move to England and settle and get my own scarlet colored passport one day. Until then, I can live vicariously through people like this American, Caroline Sullivan, who has gone through the UK citizenship process and gained a new appreciation for archaic British institutions.

From the Article England, My England from the Guardian, first a quoute on British Friendship:

Why was everything so drab? How did people stand the dreariness? And, most frustratingly, why were they so resistant to getting to know people outside their usual social circle (ie me)? “Yeah, but we’re not shallow like Americans,” one of my housemates “explained” when I asked. “When you do become friends with a British person, they’re your friend for life.” Fantastic, but what did you do until the British person decided they’d known you long enough to admit you to their gang?

This quote concerns becoming the token defensive American at parties:

As America’s image went downhill through the 90s, I felt compelled to defend it, PJ-style. Don’t diss my country, OK? And then 10 years had passed, and I was still here, but something else had taken root alongside the defensiveness. I could appreciate things now: the quiet beauty of the countryside, which had got under my skin and made me want to protect it; London’s scruffy complexity, and the way most of its inhabitants good-naturedly put up with each other; the feeling that even if this is a sinking ship, it’ll go down with humour and irony intact. Everything that had originally seemed shabby and desperate now felt comforting and homely. When Madonna refused to give birth to her second child in London because she considered the hospitals “old and Victorian”, I was outraged. I knew how they appeared in her eyes, but also that if it had been me, I wouldn’t have wanted to have the baby anywhere but my local King’s College Hospital in south London (opened 1909), with its exemplary staff. I’d met some of them when I spent five days there with a broken knee, and thought them wonderful. Back in New York, my mother, who was socked with hefty health-insurance premiums every month, marvelled at the idea that the NHS had fixed my knee for free. “They didn’t charge you anything?” she kept asking.

This last quote concerns the actual citizenship process:

When I found out how laborious the application process is, it took another year to get around to it. There’s a 20-page form requiring two British referees, details of every absence from the country in the past five years and a tonne of documents, including tax returns and passport. But before you can send it, you need to pass the Life in the UK test, which was introduced in 2005 to ensure applicants had a grasp of what Britishness was about. My test centre was on a Clapham industrial estate, where 25 of us – a mix of South Americans, Africans and a sweet Iraqi guy who was taking it for the third time – were sitting in front of computers to answer the 24 questions. Bags had to be left on a table, and phones switched off. We were warned that if a phone rang during the test, its owner would automatically fail.

We also agreed not to disclose details of the questions, so all I can say is: I’d thought 20 years of living here meant I’d sail through, but I was wrong. Now I understand why almost 200,000 of the 650,000 tests taken so far have ended in failure. I was expecting gifts such as, “Who is the heir to the throne?” but this was really tough. Despite a week swotting up with the official preparation guide (£10 from WH Smith), I was flummoxed by half the questions. So much for 20 years.

I passed, though, and duly sent everything to the Immigration and Nationality Directorate, with a cheque for £655 (increased from around £250 in 2006). Four months later, the IND replied, saying my application had been approved. And two weeks ago, at a ceremony for 40 of us at Lambeth Town Hall, I became British.

Click here if you’d like to read the whole article.