The price of being an immigrant
The EU has tried for long to regulate and unify it´s internal market. A lot of progress has been made in a number of fields, some of the most prominent being the Schengen Agreement, the Euro, the European Central Bank, plus hundreds of regulations to stablish a frame of reference to allow countries fair play rules, with the goal being to be able to compete with other key blocks like the US or China.
As the EU kept growing it became increasingly harder to reach consensus, and they tried to set-up a constitution in order to speed up the legislative process, this process has failed, because of several factors both simple and complex, but essentially because of the fear of loosing power to brussels in a number of key fields, one of them being immigration.
Going from a third world country to an EU country, specially for skilled workers on legal work permits, generally means putting up with a language barrier, 5 years of usually not being able to change your job, work independantly, being underpaid, sometimes being descriminated and so on. Now the thing is, in the current terms are different for all countries, oin the UK you will get Indefinite Leave to Remain after 4 years of legal employment, and citizenship after 5 years. In Germany, it's 5 years, plus a number of conditions, and after 7 or 8 citizenship. In other coutnries it may take up to 12 years or more.
There have been efforts to harmonize this issue, one of them being the EU Council Directive 2003/109/EC of 25 November 2003, which sets up a set of standard rules to grant Long Term resident Status to third state nationals living legally in the EU territory for a period of five years or more, which will allow them to work and travel to other EU countries. The directive must be implemented by January next Year, with a number of countries opting out of the agreement, namely the UK, Ireland and Denmark.
The situation is, in the UK, you can get a certain kind of work permit that will never lead to you being granted Indefinite Leave to Remain, that means, no matter how long you stay and work in the country, you will never get the right to become a permanent resident, change employer or work independently. The question is, how much money would you be willing to pay to change your permit to one that gives you said unlimited residency, or the opposite questions, how much money would you charge extra for not having the other permit?
The EU has tried for long to regulate and unify it´s internal market. A lot of progress has been made in a number of fields, some of the most prominent being the Schengen Agreement, the Euro, the European Central Bank, plus hundreds of regulations to stablish a frame of reference to allow countries fair play rules, with the goal being to be able to compete with other key blocks like the US or China.
As the EU kept growing it became increasingly harder to reach consensus, and they tried to set-up a constitution in order to speed up the legislative process, this process has failed, because of several factors both simple and complex, but essentially because of the fear of loosing power to brussels in a number of key fields, one of them being immigration.
Going from a third world country to an EU country, specially for skilled workers on legal work permits, generally means putting up with a language barrier, 5 years of usually not being able to change your job, work independantly, being underpaid, sometimes being descriminated and so on. Now the thing is, in the current terms are different for all countries, oin the UK you will get Indefinite Leave to Remain after 4 years of legal employment, and citizenship after 5 years. In Germany, it's 5 years, plus a number of conditions, and after 7 or 8 citizenship. In other coutnries it may take up to 12 years or more.
There have been efforts to harmonize this issue, one of them being the EU Council Directive 2003/109/EC of 25 November 2003, which sets up a set of standard rules to grant Long Term resident Status to third state nationals living legally in the EU territory for a period of five years or more, which will allow them to work and travel to other EU countries. The directive must be implemented by January next Year, with a number of countries opting out of the agreement, namely the UK, Ireland and Denmark.
The situation is, in the UK, you can get a certain kind of work permit that will never lead to you being granted Indefinite Leave to Remain, that means, no matter how long you stay and work in the country, you will never get the right to become a permanent resident, change employer or work independently. The question is, how much money would you be willing to pay to change your permit to one that gives you said unlimited residency, or the opposite questions, how much money would you charge extra for not having the other permit?
