Honesty: COVID restrictions disproportionately affect immigrants, but not for the obvious reasons. A thread (1/n). #immigration

Immigrants often intend to gain permanent residency (PR)/citizenship (CZ) status, and are under intense scrutiny by the Immigration/Home Office. (2/n)

In almost any country I lived, the rule is that you cannot have stayed more than 'X' amount of months abroad within the last 'Y' years prior to application to PR/CZ. In the UK, this is 6 months in the past 5 years prior to applying. This includes holidays in Europe. (3/n)

With very tight restrictions (have you seen in Scotland?!),quarantines, and uncertainty of flights, immigrants often cannot predict how long they will effectively stay overseas visiting family. Two options remain: (4/n)

1) Risk and go anyways. After all many immigrants haven't seen family + friends in years or decades, who knows how many will be lost due to the pandemics. The risk is losing the ability to apply for PR/CZ status later, which can mean "adios" from the country of residency (5/n)

2) Dont go and risk not seeing many family members for the last time. This at least guarantees that immigration officers will be "happy" with your time in the country. Who cares that your parents passed away/need care anyways?!(sarcasm!) (6/n)

Is it time for us to be more understanding of the unprecedented circumstances and think about PEOPLE, instead of playing strictly by the BOOK/paperwork?! We are all struggling with the situation. Anything that can make this more bearable is worthy, isnt it?! (7/7)