Commonwealth & EU nations working here without any caveats
If I may, as one of the commonwealth folk you describe there is a
caveat and it's a big one. In order for a Commonwealth person to work in Britain/EU you need either a UK passport or an ancestral visa. To get the legally entitled passport one parent (in my case father) must be born in the UK. (there are other specifics but that's not the point of this post).
For the ancestral visa, a grandparent must be born in the UK.
Checkboard came here on an ancestral visa and now has a UK passport, that is,
British citizenship after fulfilling all the (ever changing) requirements and paying out approx £2,000.
Without the (close) ancestral ties we have with Britain we would have
no chance of immigrating here under the UK's present polices.
I do understand your frustration, however, as some one who has gone "modular" and done the instructing, bush flying and turbo prop flying, I feel I deserve the job I have.