Bloody immigrants! I blame old IT contractors....

[Ticktock]

I'm a non-EU furriner who travels a fair bit each year.

It used to be that immigration had a separate queue for non-EU passports who are residents, but they've taken that away now, so I can queue for anywhere between 15 minutes to nearly 2 hours with all the other foreigners at T5. Once I get to the desk I take around 30 seconds to get through, normally.
My residency stamp is in an old passport as they now charge some stupid amount to have it transferred to the new passport, when they used to just put a new stamp in the new passport when I first used it passing through immigration. The only questions I'm normally asked are "Why are you travelling to the UK" or "How long are you staying for", both of which are answered by "I live here", and "How did you get the right to reside here".

They're changing my passport when I next get it renewed - up until now you could only get a 5 year passport, no RFID, cannot use photobooths. I missed signing up for IRIS by about 3 weeks, so now looking forward to getting a chip so that I can use the auto-gates. At least when I travel with my wife I can use the UK passport queue with her.

[CoolCat]

Its the remains of the Raytheon eBorders massive programme ongoing failure, layered alongside the 5 billion quid national ID programme that this government binned when they first got into office and replaced with a smaller version of itself.

Still compared to the universal credit shambles of a programme, the NHS IT fiascos (and they have just thrown another billion quid at NHS IT nonsense today), and so on and so on

To say nothing of the DCNS MOD programme currently in need of a submarine its so far underwater, the new aircraft carriers and the will they wont they hover planes

The public sector sure knows how to waste

[BigRed]

IAt least when I travel with my wife I can use the UK passport queue with her.

I'm UK and wife has ILR, we both go to the shortest queue together, always been let through but warned to use the other queue next time.

[TraceRacing]

There's a short queue?

[MarillionFan]

At gatwick last week I waited 1 hour 43 minutes to get through passport control.

Not funny with a baba and temperature like the tropics. I tried to tell others who were waiting, queuing is a British thing, it's what we do. Nothing beats a good queue. It did not appease.

Go club and use fast track.

[scooterscot]

Go club and use fast track.

It's a big price for a small privilege. Sometimes at Edinburgh I'll buy the fast track options on the airport's website, well worth the money.

[Troll]

When my son & I returned from hols this year, I was surprised by the amount of time it took to get an Ok from passport control. She asked my son his name and he refused to answer. He was 4 yrs old, tired, and shy with strangers. She asked him where his mummy was and he continued to hide his face in my neck. She then asked a great deal of questions of me, focused mainly on why we were travelling alone [which we weren't]. It felt embarrassing, but I was quite chuffed to see how thorough she was.

I was already carrying him [as well as two set of hand luggage ]. She was perfectly polite and I have to say, it didn't irk me. If she was suspicious, she needed to check.

I'm just incredibly glad I decided to give my son my surname.

Curious as to why a border official would grill a child like this - was your partner ethnic - i.e. white woman carring a non white child through passport control?

[bless 'em all]

Curious as to why a border official would grill a child like this - was your partner ethnic - i.e. white woman carring a non white child through passport control?

Nope - all white, middle class, well spoken with the new biometric passports.

It's just another example of (a) Meeting quotas (b) Not being 'racist' by ethnic profiling.

[MaryPoppins]

Curious as to why a border official would grill a child like this - was your partner ethnic - i.e. white woman carring a non white child through passport control?

No, we're both white, and we both have the same surnames on our passports.

No idea, I think she just didnt like the look of me.

[Mich the Tester]

If Britain joined Schengen most of you wouldn't have to bother with all this.

<lowers head and awaits flaming>