No we're not a soft touch (From This Is Local London)

No we're not a soft touch

10:46am Friday 11th December 2009 in

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I WAS chatting recently to a young American performer and asked him where he came from in the States. He told me he had been brought up in Orlando, Florida where his father worked for Disney.

We were sitting in a pub, watching the rain teeming down outside which prompted me to enquire what exactly it was about the UK that made him forsake a climate and part of the world that many worldwide might consider eminently desirable for our less obviously glamorous shores.

Apparently he was working as a set designer in New York five years ago when he met an English girl and they fell in love.

When she returned to England, they decided that he should join her as soon as he could, so when his job finished he flew hotfoot to Gatwick to be reunited with his girl friend. At immigration, he was asked how long he would be staying and replied that he hoped to stay for a few months. How would he support himself? He had savings that he could access, he replied, he was in love with an English girl and wanted to marry her. He then spent 72 hours in what was to all intents and purposes a cell, inasmuch the door was locked and he had to knock on it to be allowed out to use the less than luxurious facilities.

He was then unceremoniously despatched back to the States.

Given that entering America through airports is similarly defensive in immigration terms, it is quite proper that the screening process here should be rigorous and strict, of course.

My friend re-applied in a more formal and less naive way and found himself back at the same airport some time later. He is clearly a romantic young man and had persuaded some fellow passengers to leave the luggage hall with him and hold up a series of A3 cards he had brought with him, proposing to his girlfriend.

They obliged. She accepted, the passengers cheered and they have been happily married ever since.

I tell this story partly because of its charming, impulsive and romantic conclusion, but also to reassure all those people who see our country as an easy touch offering entry to anyone who just turns up and knocks on the door, that it isn’t actually all that easy. Although probably other would-be immigrants are less innocent and candid than my friend.