PlayA Better Life Abroad? Friday, 24th April, 8pm
The programme looks at families who are emigrating from the UK in this time of global recession and starting a new life abroad.
We follow carpet fitter Sean Foy, wife Mandy and daughter Amber as they leave Leigh, in Greater Manchester, and move halfway round the world to Adelaide in Australia.
Sean’s work has almost dried up in the UK but he starts work as soon as he arrives in Oz. Meanwhile Mandy and 11-year-old Amber go house hunting. Amber has set her heart on a place with a swimming pool (anyone wanting to emigrate to Australia should start their search for information at www.immi.gov.au/immigration).
Of course exporting workers to Australia is nothing new. We’ve been doing it in large numbers since the 1940s (they were then called £10 Poms) because the Australian economy was desperate so for foreign workers.
One £10 Pom is Birmingham milkman Alan Osborne who moved to Australia in 1965 at the age of 22. Now he owns property in Adelaide and is a multi millionaire. He figures that going to Oz was the making of him.
But not all émigrés take to their new country. We meet Neil and Jacqui Smith who last summer, armed with a permanent residency visa, decided they would emigrate to Australia for good.
But they are returning to the UK after electrician Neil found it hard to get a job in Adelaide. He tells reporter Morland Sanders that he believes that Aussies are beginning to resent the thousands of Brits emigrating there.
More than 3.3m Brits have left the UK in the last decade. An estimated 5.5 million Britons live abroad. And three quarters of all Britons living abroad live in the top 10 destination countries – Australia, Spain, US, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, France, Germany, Cyprus.
We visited an Emigration Fair at Sandown Racecourse to glean reasons that some Brits were desperate to leave these shores. It was organised by Emigrate2.co.uk. One of our expert commentators was Paul Beasley, Group Editor, Emigrate Magazine. He has also written a book for consumer organisation Which? entitled Moving Abroad – a complete guide to hassle-free relocation (Emigrate2 website www.emigrate2.co.uk)
We also feature policeman Graham Clarke who last year won the Police Dog Handler of the Year crown – but he won’t be competing this year because he and his family have emigrated to Canada to join the Calgary’s police force (anyone wanting to emigrate to Canada should start their search here).
Canada, New Zealand, and Australia all have attractive packages to woo over British bobbies and have varying success in attracting officers to emigrate. Calgary Police for example currently has 129 currently serving members who have been recruited from the United Kingdom. Some one in eleven South Australian cops are Brits.
One police force is fighting back. Leicestershire Constabulary has offered ex-British cops in Oz a £10,000 relocation package to return to Old Blighty. That makes good economic sense as it costs £50,000 to train an officer, says a spokesman.