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The holiday period is a time for families to come together. But thousands of people in the UK have been thrust into uncertainty this festive season about whether they will be able to bring foreign-born partners or spouses into the country — or even remain if they are already here. The Conservative government plans next spring to more than double, from £18,600 to £38,700, the minimum income a British citizen must earn to sponsor a visa for a non-UK partner. Since 70 per cent of Britons earn less than the new threshold, settling down in the UK with a foreign-born citizen will suddenly become an option only for the better-off.
The new family visa rules are among a package of measures announced this month to reduce net “legal” migration from last year’s record 745,000. Though the surge was partly due to one-off factors, this level is politically unsustainable. But several levers the government is trying to pull are questionable.
Businesses warn that raising the minimum salary for foreign skilled workers from £26,200 also to £38,700 may prevent them from hiring people they need. Care homes say barring dependants of overseas care workers could make it hard for them, too, to fill vacancies.
Yet doubling the minimum income for family visas manages to be both callous and of limited effectiveness. Unpublished Home Office estimates suggest it will reduce net migration only by the “low tens of thousands”.
The government says the rules allow exceptions to avoid “harsh consequences”; savings can also be taken into account, and incomes of partners already working in the UK. But countless wedding plans will have to be called off by those suddenly left below the threshold; many couples will have to decide whether to leave the country to be together. Thousands more couples and families already living in the UK are going through agonies as the government says it is still establishing the specifics of the policy — including “how it will apply to those renewing visas”, not just first applications. To force families to leave because they dip below a raised income threshold would be an outrage.
Today’s £18,600 minimum was introduced in 2012. After legal challenges, the Supreme Court ruled it lawful in 2016, since independent advisers had established it as the level where someone could support a partner without needing benefits. It has never been adjusted for inflation. But more than doubling the threshold takes it far away from its original goal — and almost triples the proportion of the population who fall below it, from only a quarter today. Women, young people and ethnic minorities will be disproportionately affected.
Immigration lawyers are gearing up for legal battles over whether the new threshold is compatible with the 2016 ruling and human rights law, which may ultimately force the government to change tack. But that is of little reassurance to those in limbo today. And the UK will for now pull far ahead of most other countries that have income or savings requirements, such as the Netherlands, Ireland, Spain and Sweden — as well as the US and Norway whose thresholds today are nominally slightly higher than Britain’s.
Potentially more effective ways to reduce UK net immigration might be to raise salaries for health and care workers (though this would need to be funded), and to open short-term youth mobility schemes with the EU. The government must ensure family visas are not abused. Yet even as countries everywhere face pressure to tighten restrictions on incomers, the right to find happiness with a partner from a foreign land is surely not one that ought to be priced out of existence.
