Furriners in the BA

riffmongous

I reading a bit about Irish soldiers in the BA and then the total number of non-british people in the BA at the moment and came across a reference to a limit being placed on the number of commonwealth citizens allowed to join (excluding gurkhas). Is this the case? Now the BA website says this

You must have Indefinite Leave to Remain in the UK or have resided in the UK for five years before you start an application to join the Army. You must not have been out of the UK for a continuous period of more than 180 days (six months) during this five year period.

but I am not sure what the bolded part means in effect.

http://www.army.mod.uk/join/20149.aspx

Was this always the case? Is it part of a 'british jobs for the british thing'?

All I found after a quick search was this daily mail article saying the recidency test was introduced recently
link

Zambia

Foriegners in the British army.

I had no clue what I would find in here.

riffmongous

You don't speak Yorkshire?

(I think it's Yorkshire anyway)

Lockstep

By indefinite leave they mean that you're not there on a temporary visa or anything. So if you're a British or European citizen you're fine.
I was applying for the TA while I was in the UK and there and there was no issue.

Irish citizens living in Ireland can still apply for the Regs but not the TA, unless they move to the UK.

riffmongous

Lockstep wrote: »

By indefinite leave they mean that you're not there on a temporary visa or anything. So if you're a British or European citizen you're fine.
I was applying for the TA while I was in the UK and there and there was no issue.

Irish citizens living in Ireland can still apply for the Regs but not the TA, unless they move to the UK.

Cheers but I was more interested in how that applies to commonwealth citizens though, do they need a visa to be in the UK? I would assume so, but I don't really know very much about how the CW works

pablomakaveli

The five year residency thing was only brought in recently. CW do need visa's to be i the country but they have no problem getting them while i the army.

riffmongous

pablomakaveli wrote: »

The five year residency thing was only brought in recently. CW do need visa's to be i the country but they have no problem getting them while i the army.

So there is no real end effect? What was the reaction to this within the army?

tac foley

riffmongous wrote: »

So there is no real end effect? What was the reaction to this within the army?

Who knows?

As far as I know, the Army wasn't asked their opinion, and in any case, the Army does as it's told. It's not a bl**dy democracy, y'know.:rolleyes:

tac

tac foley

Zambia wrote: »

Foriegners in the British army.

I had no clue what I would find in here.

Basically, it means that if you are Japanese/Kazakh/Venezuelan etc you can forget it. But if you are a Commonwealth citizen with permanent leave to stay in the UK as well as residency over the required period, you are in with the same chance as anybody else.

My next-door neighbours are Finnish, and their daughter fancied joining the Royal Navy. Sadly for the Navy [she is a cracking looker and VERY bright], they turned her down flat, as she is STILL Finnish, even though she was born here on a previous 'tour'. Reminding her how many Irish there were in the British Armed Forces, I rashly advised her to brush up on her Irish accent and try again - she is a redhead with a real cute upturned nose - but she hit me.

tac

riffmongous

tac foley wrote: »

Who knows?

As far as I know, the Army wasn't asked their opinion, and in any case, the Army does as it's told. It's not a bl**dy democracy, y'know.:rolleyes:

tac

Well I was hoping maybe to hear from someone currently serving what they thought of it, or their colleagues? Even if you do what you are told I would imagine it could still affect morale.

Any idea what the proportion of not-brits was while you served Tac?

tac foley

Well, apart from me, the only non-Brits that I actually served with were Irish - that is to say, a whole lot MORE Irish than I [I'm roughly 65%, BTW]

Anyhow, after thirty-three years plundering, looting, raping and pillaging across the face of the earth in the British Army, slaughtering, annihilating, devastating and generally visiting great woe on anybody who failed to meet my standards of race, creed, religious/political belief, or colouration - let alone dress sense - it never occurred to me that having brothers-in-arms who differed slightly from me with regard to their origins was in any way deleterious to the effectiveness of the unit in which I served with such success and distinction.

Some of them were even from Yorkshire, you'll be astonished to learn, and my erstwhile Chief Clerk - a grand chap - was from Ballsbridge.

As I many have mentioned before, and go no further if it sounds familiar - it doesn't matter WHERE you are from, if you are one of us, then you are one of us.

They have yet to develop nationality-sensitive ammunition.

tac

riffmongous

tac foley wrote: »

Well, apart from me, the only non-Brits that I actually served with were Irish - that is to say, a whole lot MORE Irish than I [I'm roughly 65%, BTW]
..
..

I'm not having a go at the army here or foreigners within the army, quite the opposite, I would like to know what people think of what looks like a proposal to limit the number of non-british people, as I always thought of the BA as having a large non-british component going way back in time.

tac foley

The way that things are going right now with force reduction et al, soon both soldiers left in the British Army will have met before they joined. However, before the invention of the British Commonwealth, most of the non-British in the British Army were Irish, who were, at that time of course, classed as British citizens, so your question is not a very easy one to answer as it stands. African and Indian Colonial/native troops do not count, as they formed their own distinctive part of the Army outside the British Army per se. The Brigade of Gurkhas, wonderful chaps to the nth degree, are mercenaries employed by HM Government, and do not serve in British infantry units the way that an Irish person joining the BA would. The Indian Army has five times more of them than we do, BTW, but citizens of those countries that are still part of the dwindling Commonwealth are still elegible, with certain constraints, to join the British Army. There are, and always will be, certain occupations within the British Armed forces that can only be carried out by a British national who parents are/were both British nationals and who has lived there for the required amount of time.

However, I maintain, and those who still serve that can be bothered to read this thread might just agree, that my last-but-one line in post #11 sums it up.

tac

PS - the oldest line regiment of foot in the British Army is Scottish. However, coming from mainland Great Britain, albeit the mostly grey and miserable bit up there, they are still British.

riffmongous

Of course, I would hope so but the point of the residency test is to stop people from getting in in the first place right? From the .. Daily Mail article..

MoD Spokesman wrote:

At a time when we are having to reduce the size of our Armed Forces, it is only right we focus on recruiting UK personnel

would this not bother people? Considering the history of non UK personnel in the army

tac foley

Munchausen's Offence by Proxy here, I think.

Just who are you trying to say is offended?

'Bother people'?

You really are not getting the point here, Sir. The British soldier doesn't get bothered about the government's foreign policy - he's far more interested in getting kit that works, getting a fair crack of the whip from his superiors - whoever they might be in the food-chain, and looking after his mates.

If a citizen of the Commonwealth wants to join the British Army - then good luck to him or her, sez I.

If the British government says that it wants to concentrate recruitment on native-born British citizens, why on earth should that bother anybody except those from outside the UK who would otherwise have tried to join?

The average British Tom, and that includes me, gets what he is given, uses what he has to use and takes people as we find them. We don't go around moaning about the reduction of non-British personnel - in fact a couple of soldiers of my acquaintance seemed to have a pathological loathing of anybody who didn't have the good sense to have been born in Yorkshire, but we came to an understanding. I promised them that we'd never knowingly kill anybody that we knew had been born in that great county.

tac

riffmongous

No need to be so defensive

And by 'people' - what about commonwealth citizens already in the BA, it is their countrymen it affects.

tac foley

I'm sorry, I have no idea what goes on in the heads of people I've never met, nor do I concern my self overmuch with their personal opinions. My part of the British Army had not a single non-British-born or registered as British person in it, and that included me, since I was born here. Children born abroad to British parents [as were my son and daughter] were required to be registered as British or suffer the consequences later on.

My dad was born in Ireland when it was part of the United Kingdom, and my half-Irish mother was born here on mainland GB.

I worked with bits of the Army, RAF and RN that did have Commonwealth and 100% REAL Irish people in it, and that's the limit of my knowledge.

I'm not being defensive, just frustrated that you don't seem to be paying any attention to anything that I've written.

That's me done.

tac