ldollard

Not entirely surprised to read this, filthy underhanded miscreants that the current government is.

The sooner the conservatives are out and Teresa May is gone the better for everyone.

BritInParis

Not particularly a Tory issue but this government seems to be willing to enforce rules that were already in place which previous governments were happy to ignore.

ldollard

I have to 100% disagree.

When my wife (USA) and I (UK) first moved back to the UK in 2000 (labour) the immigration form was a two side single sheet of paper.

We put our names on it, i think our passport numbers, my mom who sponsored my wife and bam, that was it. UK immigration at the airport where nasty, but aren't they always.

From filing the paperwork to my wife coming over was about 3 months.

No egregious salary requirements, no 30 page+ application with financial addendum.

So sorry but it was 100% different. The Tories have single handedly destroyed the purpose of the UK free movement for British citizens in Europe attempting to bring back their non-eu spouses.

Now i'm not pro Tory or pro Labour, but this government has the strictest immigration policy in the entire world. And as far as i know the only country that singles out its own citizens from being able to settle with their families in their own ****ing country of birth.

over 40% of the entire United Kingdom make less than $18600. Think about that less than 24,000,000 people in the UK could NOT qualify to move their spouse to the UK and thats IF they dont have children who are not British.

Disgusting does not even begin to qualify what the UK government has done.

Pulaski

That is a ridiculous and nonsensical statistic - when there are pensioners, recent school leavers, part time workers, unemployed, stay-at-home mothers, and yes, some low paid, but it is a stretch to argue that 40% of the British population is badly-done-to. ..... And in any case I earned nearly that much labouring in a warehouse more than 25 years ago! and I wasn't even paid fork-lift premium. To argue that £18,600 is a significant burden is nonsense.

spouse of scouse

It's pounds, not dollars .......and it is a significant burden for some people. The British citizen women who've been stay at home mums for years. The British citizens who've been living and working in countries that aren't as economically developed, so have had no chance of earning the equivalent of the financial requirement. The older couples whose pensions don't meet the financial requirement.

The fact that some people can and do put in the effort and hard yards to meet the financial criteria, such as leaving their families for months and returning to the UK alone to try to secure a suitable job, doesn't make this any less of a significant burden. The older couple whose pensions don't quite make the mark? Well, they're stuffed.

(ps I just tried to send you some karma for fixing the pounds/dollars, but the karma thingy's playing up. So I'm giving you some public karma (with the happy by-product of reducing my chances of looking like a dickhead for saying it's pounds, when your message reads pounds)

michali

Three months?! We came over in 1998 and it took three days to get my husbands visa and another nine months to get ILR! Cannot remember the cost but I think it was minimal. Amazing changes

mikelincs

Not saying your situation was like this but

this is one of the reasons for the changes, people were bringing their spouses into the UK, they didn't speak a word of English, didn't work, and had no intention of working but they were able to claim all the benefits going, they also were able to bring in their extended families. OK many ?most, were from the Indian sub continent and felt that it was their right to live in the country that had ruled them for so long, but it was one of the main reasons we have certain areas in certain cities in the UK where a white person is rarely, or never, seen. Something needed to be done, the previous government was saying they wanted to cut immigration, but didn't bring in any changes, the present government, the party that got us into the EU, is trying, somewhat unseccesfully, to change that, or at least to limit the cost to the UK taxpayer.

And NO, I'm not a supporter of Cameron, or Corbyn for that matter.

Pulaski

While this is clearly the problem that was being addressed, and the reason why family financial support was removed from the equation, the new rules had to be applied equally to all British citizens, otherwise they wouldn't withstand a challenge in the courts. Unfortunately this has resulted in a relatively small number of "ethnic British" being disadvantaged when they were not part of the problem in the first place.

rebeccajo

https://www.ein.org.uk/news/new-repo...ce-appeal#toc9

Is the threshold set too high?

UKBA case file analysis cited in the Home Office's Impact Assessment suggested that around 45% of sponsors sampled were not in employment or earned less that £18,600 per annum. It also noted that the Annual Survey for Hourly Earnings indicated that around 40 - 45% of UK residents earn less than £18,600. The adult minimum wage for a 40 hour week is currently equivalent to £12,875.20 per annum.

The Government has said that £18,600 is the income level at which a couple generally cease to be eligible for income-related benefits. Its Impact Assessment suggested that a proportion of persons earning less than this would still be eligible to sponsor a partner visa - for example, if they are in receipt of certain welfare benefits and therefore exempt from the requirement, or if they and their partner have appropriate sources of non-employment income, or if they increase their working hours or skills in order to earn a higher income."

Pulaski

This.

As I said previously I earned nearly enough more than 25 years ago labouring in a warehouse, and yes it included shift premium and O/T, but I wasn't afraid of hard work. My first post-graduation employer was paying totally green, new graduates almost that much in 1991.

rebeccajo

Your own personal fortitude doesn't negate the statistic.

Pulaski

It's all too typical of the attitude in the UK today: "The government caused my problems, and the government will have to fix them for me because I am too helpless to fix my own problems." Norman Tebbit is still as right today as he was more than 30 years ago.

rebeccajo

I would tend to disagree with you on that. But that's another topic for another day and takes away from the facts.

It's all well and good to conjecture that people can just go out and get more hours. Or another job. If their employer will let them have more hours, or if they can find a second job, that can indeed put the sponsor in a position to get their loved ones visa approved.

But it's not a simple, sum total dance. The sponsor must show the wage is consistent by providing six months of pay slips. If the overtime doesn't happen one wage period, or the second job doesn't provide enough hours, the sponsor is back to square one and the six month cycle has to start over.

There's a lot about the rules that the normal, average nice person in the UK (such as yourself) doesn't know or understand. A thorough understanding usually brings them round to the conclusion that the rules are truly stacked against people who earn less. Which usually brings them round to the conclusion that's there is something truly discriminatory going on here.

Pulaski

Life is stacked against people on low income. Why pick on immigration rules, which probably affect less (I would guess a lot less) than maybe 1 poor person in 100, and ignore all the other problems of poverty?

Short of universal and equitable communism, of the sort that nobody has ever enforced and hasn't existed since prehistoric times, life for poor people is always going to be tough.

rebeccajo

I'm sorry, I don't understand. I wasn't talking about people in poverty. I was talking about people in work.

You can't be in 'poverty' (the British definition of it that is - ie on benefits) and apply to bring a spouse to the UK. The only exception to this is persons on disability or carers allowance.