The inability to work in Europe is a form of racism

Friday 11th July 2008, 2:57PM BST.

From Georgia Marie.
I WOULD like to respond to an article published on Saturday 17 May, which my attention has only recently been drawn, by Anna Plunkett-Cole called ‘A deep-rooted passport problem’.

Even though I am all for free speech, in my experience this type of article about the passport declaration issue would be more fitting in a newspaper printed in a country under dictatorship rule.

It seems to me that we in Jersey are mentally programmed never to question but to dig our heads in the sand, or as she quoted ‘to let sleeping dogs lie’.

In light of recent events in Jersey, that’s exactly what we’ve done and the timing is also interesting considering that we are talking about breaking our ties with the UK – when perhaps the UK and the EU making us re-examine our odd internal practices, inequalities and discriminations would be a good thing, especially because of these recent events.

We did not spend our time under German occupation to then be told we are being segregated with blatant disregard to our heritage and at absolutely no advantage to us at all.

It’s more then just about the principle – it’s racism, as EU residents can so easily come here but we cannot, without complication, go there.

But who cares, huh? In 40 years’ time, us 5,000 with the stamp in our passports will have all died out, so why bother wasting States Members’ brain capacity on this matter?

And to correct Miss Plunkett-Cole, yes it does create problems when trying to work away. She said herself that at least one of the ways round the passport stamp is to marry an EU citizen, thus gaining their living and working rights. That implies that there is actually a problem otherwise it wouldn’t have been mentioned.

Finally, I thank God that Miss Plunkett-Cole wasn’t around when the Suffragettes were fighting to get us females the vote. Gosh, what a ‘can of worms’ that was, huh?
1 Beaulieu Court,
Old Beaumont Hill,
St Peter.

1
Rob Mar

July 13, 2008 at 9:08 am

What a load of tosh.
I have worked and lived in the EU for the last 35 odd years, I have never had any problems with my passport not having the right stamp.
I have bought sold properties over the years, changed jobs a number of times and had to show my passport to the authorities a number of times, and have never had any problems with racism only beceuse that I have a Jersey passport ( I did change my passport for a UK one only beceuse the people at the Jersey passport office (St. Helier town hall) were being extremely arrogant and unhelpful at the time, No, if you have a Jersey passport you can work and live in the EU, As long as you keep to the rules, pay your taxes and do as they do in Rome. And quite frankly with your comments about racism and such, you would be better staying home and getting rid of that chip on your sholder….

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2
Nellie Macon

July 14, 2008 at 10:33 am

Mr Mar, we only have stamps which do not entitle us to work in the EU if we do not have an English parent or grandparent (this also applies to our children if our partners also do not have English blood). This is self-perpetuating until you marry a non-Jersey person or *live in the UK for at least 10 years (*although I am not certain about this point as I never wished to do so and thus haven’t looked into this aspect further). If you have EU national parents and take up dual nationality you also do not get this stamp in your passport. So perhaps you don’t have this stamp in your passport anyway.

I tried to move to Belgium as a youngster and I was refused permission to work over there due to this ignominous stamp so I have personal experience and there is no way for us to get around this. I even went to the English Embassy in Brussels and they confirmed this. You may have had different experiences however certainly in the EU finance sector they are extremely strict regarding this matter with Jersey people. No matter what you say, if you have this stamp in your passport you were working in the EU illegally unless you had some kind of dispensation and maybe the authorities in the EU that saw your passport were unaware of the implications of this stamp as it is quite rare.

As there are only approximately 5000 of us with this stamp in our passports the authorities do not care that we are discriminated against although they acknowledge that our understanding of the restrictions are correct and this subject has been well researched recently by Roy Le Herissier who came to the same conclusion. If you care to enquire at the Immigration Office they will confirm that this is so.

My mother is French but I would only qualify to work and live in France if I lived in the same house as her. This is a truly ridiculous situation as 3/4 of my family are French and we would have liked to move over there when the children were small so that they would learn French. On my father’s side the Pirouet’s have been here since the 1700s but that doesn’t count for anything nowadays.

I don’t have a chip on my shoulder but I deeply resent the fact that EU nationals are allowed to live and work in Jersey when we don’t have the same right to live and work in their countries. How can this be fair? I would just like to have the same choices available to me as everyone else – why is this so hard to understand?

We are constantly forced to implement EU rules as they uphold “human rights” but it appears that we Jersey people don’t have any!

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