Comment by rtpg
10 years ago
generally speaking, countries don't want you to be in them and be paid by a foreign company.
Think about it, if you're in the UK but being "paid" by a German company, are you really paying the right kind of taxes? What's to stop every major corp from having the Cayman Islands branch hire you.
Usually people working for foreign corps end up actually being contractors (and paying self-employment taxes or whatnot).
Being paid by a company in any country is equally not OK. It seems the Germany-part is just a red herring/the officer being a dick (it seems they could have easily rejected her straight at the desk - you're here to work, you don't have the visa, done, have a nice flight back, next please).
> it seems they could have easily rejected her straight at the desk - you're here to work, you don't have the visa, done, have a nice flight back, next please
They can't actually do that, any refusal has to be signed off by the duty head of the port (IIRC; I presume each terminal at LHR has a separate one!), as far as I'm aware.
generally speaking, countries don't want you to be in them and be paid by a foreign company.
Curiously, the US prefers this for temporary visitors. If you are being paid by a company outside the US to speak at a US conference, it's fine, but you are not allowed to be paid by a "US source". I guess the theory is being paid by a non-US source means you're "on business" rather than "working in the US".
That's not an immigration matter, though. As far as I'm aware, taxation policy isn't really something that comes into play with UK immigration.