No UK publications would take my pitch about the irony of the nation celebrating a wedding between a Brit & a foreigner when hundreds of thousands of mixed-nationality UK couples & families are torn apart by the Conservatives' draconian immigration laws.
I pitch all the time, and I'm used to getting rejected. But when it comes to the Royals, Britain muzzles itself in a way that really chills me.
So for those celebrating the Royal Wedding, please take a moment to educate yourself on the state of your nation.
Britain is a country that will throw a lavish wedding for an aristocrat and his foreign-born wife, at taxpayer expense, while denying its citizens the right to have their own foreign-born spouses live in the UK, for fear they might be a "drain on the nation's resources."
The unabashedly classist spouse visa laws in the UK are a direct result of the Tories' hostile environment. As someone in a position of relative privilege I still found the process humiliating & dehumanising, as well as extortionately expensive. It is designed to be this way.
Revellers will cheer for the new "progressive" royal couple, who have had every door opened for them, while thousands of married, mixed-nationality couple are forced to live apart. bbc.co.uk/news/uk-355522…
The foreign-born spouses of UK citizens are routinely denied visas, cruelly separating them from their spouses & children, without reason or a fair shot at appeal. theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2…
Tomorrow, Britain should feel deep shame for the pain & suffering it has inflicted -- & continues to inflict -- on its own citizens & their foreign-born spouses who, just like the Prince & Ms. Markle, wish to build a life & a family in the UK. Instead, the nation turns its cheek.
Btw, if any publication wants to prove me wrong about what I perceive as an unofficial self-imposed gagging order, my email is jmschaffergoddard@gmail.com, and I'm very fast.
