I live in Berlin with my daughter in school, with a German partner. We of course met before the referendum. I don't particularly have any plans to return, I like it here - I am now also a German citizen, something I would not have applied for were it not for Brexit. It is great to be able to vote (which I'm no longer allowed to do in the UK), and to have that vote count in a proportional system.
But... yes, that pull is there, dormant but there, you never know. The Pennines, a good pint, English fields and the seaside, family. When coming here to study years ago as an Erasmus student, I never thought my own country would pull up the drawbridge behind me, punish me for what turns out to be the crime of wanting to see the world, and fall in love abroad. I thought the decision about whether to ever return home would remain mine. Even were I to find a job above the threshold, I wouldn't miss out on my daughter's life for a year only to subject myself to the home office.
Thank you, Ian, for expressing my feeling on this so well. It's insane.
As former Labour Home Secretary Dr John Reid said, the Home Office is not fit for purpose. That was then. Now it is not only grossly incompetent it is deliberately malevolent too. And this has been encouraged by successive Tory Home Secretaries over the last decade, starting with May and her ‘hostile environment’ policies. I can tell a sorry tale of a ten year battle with this incompetence and malevolence which recently ended in total victory over the Home Office - but not before tens of thousands of pounds of public funds were spent ‘holding the line’ in immigration appeal tribunals and judicial reviews, when a tiny bit of imaginative flexibility would have resolved the situation in 2013. In the meantime a child has been separated from its father. Said child was three months old when the saga began and is now eleven. There have been long periods when due to the Home Office’s utter intransigence the father wasn’t even able to travel out of the country to visit his child. Precious years of a young life and that of a doting but deeply distressed father’s life lost forever! Bastards!
This is just another example of the Tories performative, gratuitous cruelty. My heart sinks every time I discover that there are new depths they can plumb.
You’ve expressed perfectly the outrage I feel at this. In some ways, this callous, mean-spirited streak is the worst part of current Toryism. They really are the most awful excuses for human beings.
I've left the UK to live in my wife's home country of Moldova. It's so much friendlier here. When I visit the immigration offices, they have big smiles, and take the opportunity to practice their English.
The contrast with Lunar House in Croydon is striking to say the least.
I apologise in advance to the more faint hearted readers of the comments section but what a bunch of Cardboard Cutout Cunts. This policy announcement made my blood boil, thank you Mr Dunt for concisely illustrating the real issues and actual situations affected people will be finding themselves in.
I spent many years travelling and working and adventuring always secure with a notion at the back of my mind that my country, my homeland was an island rock that I could and would always be able to find my way back to. I fell in love, got married and had a family. With my daughter nearing school age we had been thinking seriously about moving back to the UK around 2019. First the pandemic put paid to plans and then a war, now it seems a stab in the back from my own government will put the final nail in those plans.
I am afraid that at some point in the near future I won't be able to stay where I am because of my nationality and my family won't be able to come with me to the UK because of theirs. I won't be Abandoning my family as that doesn't square with my values, values which are a direct result of my upbringing and education in a steel town in northern England. And this is what cuts me to the core, this government has made their values perfectly clear with this policy, we'll throw you and anyone we see fit to the wolves for a snappy "5 point plan" slogan and some red meat for the right wing rags. These are not the values I was taught growing up these people are despicable. In the space of a few short years that island rock I could always find my way back to has become shrouded, darker, unenticing, inhospitable all because it's run by Cunts with a capital C.
I’ve got serious neck issues from hanging my head in shame for what seems FOR-EVER at this ‘government’, its supporters & their constant desire to punch downwards.
Beyond that though Ian, have you or any of your subscribers on here seen or heard any serious discussion about WHO in this country is going to do all the nursing, caring, crop picking, cleaning, hospitality work etc etc if, through its cruelty, this ‘government’ actually succeeds in dramatically reducing immigration?
I have worked with people that this policy affects in the armed forces. A large proportion of armed forces recruiting is currently conducted from foreign and commonwealth countries. The amount that these soldiers and seaman earn in their early career is insufficient for them to bring family members over leading to heartbreaking decisions. For example one lady left her children behind until for a number of years until she was promoted to a certain level.
Really beautiful writing from Ian. Struck a chord because this is something that could easily have happened to me - I had many international relationships when I was younger and studying/working abroad. Where is the empathy from our government? How many relationships will be torn in two? How many families will be broken as a result of their blithe and clumsy policy actions?
Thank you Ian. A lot of people are in worse situations than me, but it does mean it's unlikely that I'll ever come back and live in the UK...and I would love to, particularly as my children grow up and move there. Unfortunately my spouse doesn't have citizenship and past residency has expired. We could probably make it work but I can't be the only British citizen abroad who'd like to return home again, but doesn't want to or can't get involved in Home Office hell. It makes me feel abandoned by my country.
It is incredibly validating to read what you have to say on this.
Our family was separated over the covid period for four years until very recently. I’d been living in my husbands country for 5 years when the MIR was introduced. I went back to the U.K. with our two kids (both born before the MIR) for what was initially meant to be a year or two but we got caught up in the covid pandemic. Our business in my husbands country was brought to its knees. Couldn’t afford to return and, as a state sanctioned single mum, couldn’t afford to sponsor my husband. The four of us lived in this hellish state of limbo until we managed to move back just a few months ago. It was a traumatising time and a difficult decision. I once again have to endure missing my family. I was hoping we’d all move to the U.K. when the kids finish school. I don’t know how we’ll ever manage that now. I just listened to the talkback Ulster radio program. One of the guests tried to make the claim that £38k was a graduate salary. I’m not sure what planet he’s living on but most graduates never earn that amount.
The Tories remind me of somebody drowning, clinging on to whatever and whoever floats by in a desperate attempt to save themselves and not caring who they drag under with them so long as they keep their heads above water.
From a purely HR Employment law perspective the decision to change the threshold for marital visa's is going to be devastating to many of the clients I work with who have employees working for them on spousal visa's for salaries way below that threshold which is a whole other matter as well but the fact that this imposes such unfair ruling on a person working in a country because the one they love and/or have raised a family with is here is just monstrous and my heart really goes out to all affected already and those who have not realised yet the impact this will have on their lives. I cannot understand why any of this will have any impact on a disastrous and draconian immigration policy especially at a time where skilled employees in lower paid industries have never been needed more such as the care industry, how are any of these changes which in the majority will impact lower paid workers from outside of the UK going to help with productivity in this country. Its preposterous and monstrous and will be devastating to many families but also to the companies that employee those workers. If anyone reading this is impacted by this decision and would like free of charge advice and counsel from a HR consultant I will be happy to support in anyway I can.
There seems to be a callousness about the Home Office that even predates the Tory governments who have taken it to new levels. It feels like it is ingrained in the culture. As others have suggested, time to break it up.
And this is on top of all the other incredibly unwelcoming aspects of British immigration policy. Like most people I had no idea quite how difficult it is for an ordinary foreigner to get a visa to visit Britain until I was personally affected when my brother-in-law was denied a visa to attend our wedding party. And then there's the insane cost of even a short-term visa. A Schengen visa is free for the spouse of a European national and the application process is about as faff-free as possible; even a short-term visa for the spouse of a UK national is well over a hundred pounds long and the application form is 10 or 12 pages long. I am fortunate enough to just about meet the new income requirement but even then I'm still put off by the thousands of pounds it will cost even if I ever want to bring my wife to live permanently in the UK.
My rights as an EU citizen were taken away by a referendum I was not allowed to vote in because I had been out of the country for just over 15 years. Now my rights, and the rights of my two British citizen children have been taken away by the same people.
And the overarching, abominably stupid thing is that this will have virtually no impact on immigration numbers: it will force many British citizens, who otherwise would remain, to leave the UK to go to their spouse's country. (Net migration numbers means people leaving is just as bad for the headline figure as people arriving.)
I live in an Asian country where my family all have permanent residency. Fortunately, we have also lived for a time in my spouse's country, during which time I was able to get citizenship. We have alternatives. Places where we all have the right to live together. I feel incredibly sorry for those who do not.
(That doesn't mean I'm not still angry about having the right to live in our own country effectively taken away from myself and my children!)
I'm surprised that no one challenged the old levels of income under the HRA, but now with these new, egregious levels of required wealth, I would be shocked if there wasn't a challenge that was ultimately successful. Sadly, that may take a long time to wend its way through the courts.
Happily, the Tories are even more likely to be ejected in short order as a result of this cruelty. It looks like this income requirement is set by bureaucratic fiat, rather than legislation, so an incoming Labour Home Secretary could easily set it to 10p from day 1, if he / she was so inclined. Let's hope that is what happens.
But this question will still remain: how many foreign spouses are going to want to live in Britain anymore given what this and the last few years has revealed about the dark, nasty heart of British society and politics?
I live in Berlin with my daughter in school, with a German partner. We of course met before the referendum. I don't particularly have any plans to return, I like it here - I am now also a German citizen, something I would not have applied for were it not for Brexit. It is great to be able to vote (which I'm no longer allowed to do in the UK), and to have that vote count in a proportional system.
But... yes, that pull is there, dormant but there, you never know. The Pennines, a good pint, English fields and the seaside, family. When coming here to study years ago as an Erasmus student, I never thought my own country would pull up the drawbridge behind me, punish me for what turns out to be the crime of wanting to see the world, and fall in love abroad. I thought the decision about whether to ever return home would remain mine. Even were I to find a job above the threshold, I wouldn't miss out on my daughter's life for a year only to subject myself to the home office.
Thank you, Ian, for expressing my feeling on this so well. It's insane.
> It is great to be able to vote (which I'm no longer allowed to do in the UK)
This rule seems likely to change so those of us living abroad will be able to vote again soon: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/oct/30/britons-living-overseas-for-over-15-years-likely-to-win-voting-right-before-next-election
I miss the Pennines and a good pint too!
If only we had had this right in 2016!
As former Labour Home Secretary Dr John Reid said, the Home Office is not fit for purpose. That was then. Now it is not only grossly incompetent it is deliberately malevolent too. And this has been encouraged by successive Tory Home Secretaries over the last decade, starting with May and her ‘hostile environment’ policies. I can tell a sorry tale of a ten year battle with this incompetence and malevolence which recently ended in total victory over the Home Office - but not before tens of thousands of pounds of public funds were spent ‘holding the line’ in immigration appeal tribunals and judicial reviews, when a tiny bit of imaginative flexibility would have resolved the situation in 2013. In the meantime a child has been separated from its father. Said child was three months old when the saga began and is now eleven. There have been long periods when due to the Home Office’s utter intransigence the father wasn’t even able to travel out of the country to visit his child. Precious years of a young life and that of a doting but deeply distressed father’s life lost forever! Bastards!
This is just another example of the Tories performative, gratuitous cruelty. My heart sinks every time I discover that there are new depths they can plumb.
You’ve expressed perfectly the outrage I feel at this. In some ways, this callous, mean-spirited streak is the worst part of current Toryism. They really are the most awful excuses for human beings.
I've left the UK to live in my wife's home country of Moldova. It's so much friendlier here. When I visit the immigration offices, they have big smiles, and take the opportunity to practice their English.
The contrast with Lunar House in Croydon is striking to say the least.
I apologise in advance to the more faint hearted readers of the comments section but what a bunch of Cardboard Cutout Cunts. This policy announcement made my blood boil, thank you Mr Dunt for concisely illustrating the real issues and actual situations affected people will be finding themselves in.
I spent many years travelling and working and adventuring always secure with a notion at the back of my mind that my country, my homeland was an island rock that I could and would always be able to find my way back to. I fell in love, got married and had a family. With my daughter nearing school age we had been thinking seriously about moving back to the UK around 2019. First the pandemic put paid to plans and then a war, now it seems a stab in the back from my own government will put the final nail in those plans.
I am afraid that at some point in the near future I won't be able to stay where I am because of my nationality and my family won't be able to come with me to the UK because of theirs. I won't be Abandoning my family as that doesn't square with my values, values which are a direct result of my upbringing and education in a steel town in northern England. And this is what cuts me to the core, this government has made their values perfectly clear with this policy, we'll throw you and anyone we see fit to the wolves for a snappy "5 point plan" slogan and some red meat for the right wing rags. These are not the values I was taught growing up these people are despicable. In the space of a few short years that island rock I could always find my way back to has become shrouded, darker, unenticing, inhospitable all because it's run by Cunts with a capital C.
I’ve got serious neck issues from hanging my head in shame for what seems FOR-EVER at this ‘government’, its supporters & their constant desire to punch downwards.
Beyond that though Ian, have you or any of your subscribers on here seen or heard any serious discussion about WHO in this country is going to do all the nursing, caring, crop picking, cleaning, hospitality work etc etc if, through its cruelty, this ‘government’ actually succeeds in dramatically reducing immigration?
The disabled, it seems.
and maybe prisoner slave labour, like the US.
I have worked with people that this policy affects in the armed forces. A large proportion of armed forces recruiting is currently conducted from foreign and commonwealth countries. The amount that these soldiers and seaman earn in their early career is insufficient for them to bring family members over leading to heartbreaking decisions. For example one lady left her children behind until for a number of years until she was promoted to a certain level.
This new change will only hurt them more.
Really beautiful writing from Ian. Struck a chord because this is something that could easily have happened to me - I had many international relationships when I was younger and studying/working abroad. Where is the empathy from our government? How many relationships will be torn in two? How many families will be broken as a result of their blithe and clumsy policy actions?
Thank you Ian. A lot of people are in worse situations than me, but it does mean it's unlikely that I'll ever come back and live in the UK...and I would love to, particularly as my children grow up and move there. Unfortunately my spouse doesn't have citizenship and past residency has expired. We could probably make it work but I can't be the only British citizen abroad who'd like to return home again, but doesn't want to or can't get involved in Home Office hell. It makes me feel abandoned by my country.
It is incredibly validating to read what you have to say on this.
Our family was separated over the covid period for four years until very recently. I’d been living in my husbands country for 5 years when the MIR was introduced. I went back to the U.K. with our two kids (both born before the MIR) for what was initially meant to be a year or two but we got caught up in the covid pandemic. Our business in my husbands country was brought to its knees. Couldn’t afford to return and, as a state sanctioned single mum, couldn’t afford to sponsor my husband. The four of us lived in this hellish state of limbo until we managed to move back just a few months ago. It was a traumatising time and a difficult decision. I once again have to endure missing my family. I was hoping we’d all move to the U.K. when the kids finish school. I don’t know how we’ll ever manage that now. I just listened to the talkback Ulster radio program. One of the guests tried to make the claim that £38k was a graduate salary. I’m not sure what planet he’s living on but most graduates never earn that amount.
The Tories remind me of somebody drowning, clinging on to whatever and whoever floats by in a desperate attempt to save themselves and not caring who they drag under with them so long as they keep their heads above water.
From a purely HR Employment law perspective the decision to change the threshold for marital visa's is going to be devastating to many of the clients I work with who have employees working for them on spousal visa's for salaries way below that threshold which is a whole other matter as well but the fact that this imposes such unfair ruling on a person working in a country because the one they love and/or have raised a family with is here is just monstrous and my heart really goes out to all affected already and those who have not realised yet the impact this will have on their lives. I cannot understand why any of this will have any impact on a disastrous and draconian immigration policy especially at a time where skilled employees in lower paid industries have never been needed more such as the care industry, how are any of these changes which in the majority will impact lower paid workers from outside of the UK going to help with productivity in this country. Its preposterous and monstrous and will be devastating to many families but also to the companies that employee those workers. If anyone reading this is impacted by this decision and would like free of charge advice and counsel from a HR consultant I will be happy to support in anyway I can.
There seems to be a callousness about the Home Office that even predates the Tory governments who have taken it to new levels. It feels like it is ingrained in the culture. As others have suggested, time to break it up.
And this is on top of all the other incredibly unwelcoming aspects of British immigration policy. Like most people I had no idea quite how difficult it is for an ordinary foreigner to get a visa to visit Britain until I was personally affected when my brother-in-law was denied a visa to attend our wedding party. And then there's the insane cost of even a short-term visa. A Schengen visa is free for the spouse of a European national and the application process is about as faff-free as possible; even a short-term visa for the spouse of a UK national is well over a hundred pounds long and the application form is 10 or 12 pages long. I am fortunate enough to just about meet the new income requirement but even then I'm still put off by the thousands of pounds it will cost even if I ever want to bring my wife to live permanently in the UK.
My rights as an EU citizen were taken away by a referendum I was not allowed to vote in because I had been out of the country for just over 15 years. Now my rights, and the rights of my two British citizen children have been taken away by the same people.
And the overarching, abominably stupid thing is that this will have virtually no impact on immigration numbers: it will force many British citizens, who otherwise would remain, to leave the UK to go to their spouse's country. (Net migration numbers means people leaving is just as bad for the headline figure as people arriving.)
I live in an Asian country where my family all have permanent residency. Fortunately, we have also lived for a time in my spouse's country, during which time I was able to get citizenship. We have alternatives. Places where we all have the right to live together. I feel incredibly sorry for those who do not.
(That doesn't mean I'm not still angry about having the right to live in our own country effectively taken away from myself and my children!)
I'm surprised that no one challenged the old levels of income under the HRA, but now with these new, egregious levels of required wealth, I would be shocked if there wasn't a challenge that was ultimately successful. Sadly, that may take a long time to wend its way through the courts.
Happily, the Tories are even more likely to be ejected in short order as a result of this cruelty. It looks like this income requirement is set by bureaucratic fiat, rather than legislation, so an incoming Labour Home Secretary could easily set it to 10p from day 1, if he / she was so inclined. Let's hope that is what happens.
But this question will still remain: how many foreign spouses are going to want to live in Britain anymore given what this and the last few years has revealed about the dark, nasty heart of British society and politics?
Thank you for writing this so eloquently.