The Voiceless Sponsors

Young hearts

My interest in immigration is non-academic. As a British citizen my rights to freedom of movement mean that over the past few years I’ve never needed a visa to live, work or study in another EU country. I sincerely value the rights and opportunities European citizenship has afforded me, amidst the often unappreciated uniqueness of EU membership. This sense of value has further increased in the context of my wife’s immigration problems.

She emigrated from New Zealand and we met while living in Belfast in 2009. As we grew closer, we both understood that upon the expiry of her working holiday visa (pre-PBS) we would probably have to leave the UK to stay together; short of getting married prematurely. I was keen to embrace the change, and she was eager to see more of Europe, so we moved to Berlin in August 2010. We found some paid internships for a while, and following some work experience in the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission, I took the opportunity to build on it with some training in migration and human rights. Little did I realise how relevant this would become.

But eventually our money ran out, and without adequate funds or work opportunities to sustain ourselves for much longer, we decided to move in with my parents in England, as many young people are now doing.

Having made the commitment to leave the country together a year previous, we also took the precaution of cementing our relationship in marriage in February 2011, as indeed our lives were beginning to orient around trying to stay together.

As a non-EU spouse, she was required to get entry clearance before applying for a settlement visa. Since we were living outside of the UK for more than 6 months, I was considered to be exercising treaty rights, as a European citizen living and working in another member state. This made my wife eligible to apply for an EEA Family Permit, rather than the spousal visa. After many telephone and internet enquiries before and during our application process, we were told that all we needed to provide was  our marriage certificate and evidence of my residence and employment in Germany.

Rejection

A month after submitting the application we finally got a response; a rejection, for not providing any supporting evidence of a subsisting or affectionate relationship. This in itself was an insult, after up heaving our whole lives and moving to Germany just to stay together and having got married not long before.

Our feelings of unfairness and flawed decision making were vindicated recently in a review of entry clearance decision making by the Independent Chief Inspector of the UKBA. The report pointed out that in in 16% of the cases:

applicants were refused entry clearance for failing to provide information which they could not have been aware of at the time of submitting their applications. This was unfair.

It was this personal turmoil which gave me an insight into the fear, uncertainty and contingency planning that I know so many other British citizens and permanent residents go through to be with loved ones. So with a hunch that our experience cannot have been unique, I started considering the role of UK family ‘sponsors’ in the immigration debate, and their part as equally subjected individuals during visa processing.

Within the context of a simplified, “them and us” media debate, the sponsor represents to me something of a game-changer in highlighting the impact of family immigration restrictions. We are inundated with reports on the cost of immigration to Britain and British people economically, and socially, but certainly not personally or emotionally.

Don’t we have rights to a family as much as anyone else? Why are we subjected to such life altering bureaucracy for the arbitrary nationality of our loved ones? The government is certainly less bold in answering those questions, and I’m sure they’d prefer to keep it that way – a simple utilitarian, economic, necessity.

Catharsis

During the week-by-week uncertainty of my wife’s entry clearance fiasco, perhaps the most upsetting dimension was how few people there were to talk to about it; short of expensive legal advice and a less than understanding UKBA hotline. I wrote a personal blog to compensate for the gut wrenching insecurity it put us through; and to my surprise, it rallied a large amount of interest and sympathy from friends and family.

So last November I set up another blog, called the Family Immigration Alliance. The blog principally exists to give sponsors the chance to open up about their experience during visa processing and vent their frustrations in a place where they want to be heard. At the very least it offers the same catharsis I felt during our own struggle. Cumulatively, I hope that this can come to increase the representation of the much lacking human, and domestic, side to family immigration.

If you would like to contribute to it, or know anybody that would, please check out the blog or email familyimmigrationalliance@gmail.com

Besides this personal desire to publicise these often ignored experiences of UK sponsors, I believe there is a more threatening context for mobilising around, particularly the minimum income threshold proposals currently under government consideration, and the legal vulnerability of the UK Bill of Rights proposals.

In the second part of this guest-post, I will explore the impact these proposals will have on sponsors.