Here's how your immigrant/emigrant regulations work, David:

My sister, Patricia Firth (now Pat Hansen) was an avid figure skater when she was a little girl. She took to it with enthusiasm, took lessons, and practiced very hard. She gained experience early on skating in local skating club ice shows and became very good as a competitive skater. In time, she won two Pacific Coast Senior Ladies' figure skating championships, then in 1953 she won the United States Junior Ladies' Championship (CLICK and scroll down to 1953). This qualified her to compete for the United States in the 1955 World Championships in Vienna, Austria. There, she placed seventh overall, not bad for a young newcomer, especially against such powerhouses as Tenley Albright and Carol Heiss (CLICK and scroll down to 1953, right-hand column, 7th place).

A tour of Europe followed, sponsored by various European skating clubs. Pat skated exhibitions in Switzerland, Germany, France, and England.

In England, she received an offer: if she would drop competitive skating and turn professional, the ice show in residence at Empress Hall wanted to hire her as its featured attraction. Pat was young and beautiful, and an elegant figure skater. And she would be working with a number of notable performers, including comic Richard Hearn, aka "Mister Pastry." They told her (in confidence) that they wanted her to replace their current featured skater, a former English champion and occasional movie star, Belita, who had been skating with the show for nearly a decade, and even though she was still very good, as far as the audiences were concerned, she had passed her "sell-by" date. She was no longer the draw that she used to be.

My sister thought it over very carefully, decided that it was a marvelous opportunity, and accepted the offer.

Since it would be a few months before rehearsals for the new show were due to start, she returned to Seattle. At the appointed time, she was packed, had her plane ticket to London, and was about to depart when she received a telegram.

The British government had denied her a work permit. Their reasoning was that since there was an English woman who was not only capable of doing the job, but she was currently doing it. No consideration was given to the needs and wishes of the sponsors of the shows, nor to the wishes of the shows' audiences. Nor, for that matter, the wishes of Belita herself. An arbitrary, thoughtless decision.

So that ended that. Since Pat had signed a contract (pending the granting of a work permit) with Empress Hall, she was deemed by the United States Figure Skating Association as a "professional" and hence, could no longer skate competitively. She considered entering other ice shows such as the "Ice Capades" or the "Ice Follies," but decided to turn to teaching instead. It was while teaching at the Great Falls, Montana figure skating club, she met her future husband.

Everything worked out for my sister. She and her husband have three children, a couple of grandchildren, and currently live part of the year near Seattle and another part on Flathead Lake in Montana.

But British labor laws denied her the opportunity to become an international figure skating star. And deprived English audiences of an opportunity to see a very talented and elegant young performer.

Irony:

It turned out Belita was perfectly amenable to leaving the show to be replace by a new young American skater. Since the American girl had been denied a work permit, Belita agreed to stay on for another year. But—the powers that be at Empress Hall had merely anticipated Belita's announcement of her own decision.

The following year (1956), Gladys Lyne Jepson-Turner (born in Nether Wallop [I beg your pardon!!], Hampshire, England, known professionally as "Belita"), announced that she was retiring from show business. She went on to say that she had always hated show business in general and figure skating in particular and she had done it only because when she was a little girl, her mother had forced her into it.

Later, the former Belita opened a garden center in west London, then retired to the south of France, where she passed away in 2005 at the age of 82.

Don Firth