Word: britishism
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...million and 30 million people are estimated to have died from exhaustion, illness and malnutrition after toiling in the notorious Soviet gulag in 14-hour days felling trees, digging in the frigid Siberian tundra or mining coal. Often the labor was as fruitless as the punishments devised by the British. In the early 1930s, more than 100,000 prisoners toiled to construct a canal between the White and Baltic seas - which turned out to be too narrow and shallow to service most vessels...
...Becoming British just got trickier. Under a new government proposal announced on Aug. 3, would-be Brits may have to work a little bit harder to get their citizenship when a second test is added to the country's points-based immigration system. If the plan goes through, applicants would serve a term as "probationary citizens," winning or losing points on the path to the passport depending on how well they fit into British society...
...Immigration is a hot-button issue for British voters, with the recession fueling fears that Brits are losing already scarce jobs to foreigners. In a Home Office poll released in February, 64% of respondents said they were dissatisfied with the government's immigration policies. That same month, the government responded to the economic downturn by toughening the points system for getting a visa into the country. Now it argues that a second, more difficult test to decide who can stay would give it an additional mechanism to respond to the needs of the U.K.'s workforce. (Read "Immigration...
...concerned with both legal and illegal immigration to the U.K., welcomes the new plan. "This is a small, crowded island," says chairman Sir Andrew Green. "In a normally functioning economy there is not a fixed number of jobs, so it's not the case that one immigrant takes one British job. However, there is some effect of the kind as the rate of employment is falling very fast...
...Even so, the new test would cover only a fraction of the people who go to work and live in the U.K. Last year about 129,000 immigrants were granted British citizenship. Yet the nation is also home to an estimated 725,000 illegal immigrants and attracts many workers from across the European Economic Area who have less incentive to seek citizenship since they can legally work in the country without visas. (Read "Britain's Clown Shortage: Visa Rules Hit the Circus...