Mark Watson
Mark Watson is a businessman and campaigner, currently Director of Equal Planet Ltd.
Watson joined the Civil Service in 1989 as an immigration officer based at Gatwick airport. The following year he met his boyfriend, Ander Da Silva, an actor and model, on a field trip up the Amazon. In October 1991, the Brazilian visited him on a six-month visa. Watson used his position as an immigration officer to arrange for Da Silva to stay indefinitely in the UK. WHen this was discovered he was sent to prison and Da Silva was deported. While on bail awaiting trial he wrote a guide, United Kingdom Immigration Law and Rules and Same-Sex Couples, to help gay people in the same situation. It quotes guidelines which state: "Application for leave on the basis of a (homosexual) relationship fall to be considered as a matter of discretion outside the Immigration Rules. Ministers have indicated that such applications are unlikely to be approved."[1]
In 1993 he set up the an Immigration Group within Stonewall Equality Limited; it later became the UK Lesbian and Gay Immigration Group (UKLGIG).. After volunteering with Stonewall for a year he joined the payroll, eventually becoming communications director.
In 2000 he left Stonewall and joined Gay.com.[2]
In 2002 he was elected to Croydon Council and served as the Cabinet Member for Equalities.
He became the Executive Director of One Planet Products in 2007 and the Chief Operating Officer at the environmental charity BioRegional in 2008. Before joining BioRegional he was the managing director of the award-winning internet business, PlanetOut UK Ltd.
In 2003 he climbed Kilimanjaro to raise money for HIV / AIDS projects in Africa.[3]
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