The Voiceless Sponsors - Part 2

An Indecent Proposal

After the rejection of my wife’s entry clearance application (see my first blog) in March 2011, we opted to accept this flawed decision rather than wait 9 months to appeal. Instead we simply re-applied, this time with an abundance of personal items, for which we found Facebook an extraordinary resource. Then after scraping through another 6 weeks on noodles and friends’ sofas in Berlin we were eventually successful.

Now in England, midway through a residency visa application, my wife works for a university. We both have permanent jobs, which earn us a good wage, and enabled us to move out from my parents’ home. We are finally able to independently demonstrate that we won’t need ‘recourse to public funds’.

But in November, our humble plan to live like any other married couple was shaken again by the Migration Advisory Committee’s proposals to raise the minimum income threshold for sponsors to at least £18,700 in order for a non-EU spouse live with them in the UK. This, as the situation is currently, still does not take into account the spouses earning potential because it is ‘difficult to calculate’.

Indeed the past six months have been something of a psychological burden for me, knowing that my wife, in spite of her own income, may well face another visa rejection because of my employment status alone. In the past she has supported me when finances were tough, avoiding the need for a job seekers allowance - what married couple wouldn’t pool their resources to help each other out? By preventing a spouse joining the UK sponsor, the government just as easily forces the sponsor onto benefits. Until getting permanent employment, this could have been the case for me. Where my wife could assist me financially from her income, should she be denied a visa I would have ended up at least eligible to claim a job seekers allowance without other financial assistance.

What these proposals expose is a very flawed assumption that upon entering the UK the spouse simply will not work at all.

Pressure on the State

It further strikes me that these proposals threaten to restrict 50% of the population from having a non-EU spouse live with them. This begs a serious question:

at what point does this cease being immigration control and simply economic repression; where your income can determine your right to a family?

At this juncture the debate is no longer about immigration, but about depriving poor people of the dignity to have a family, let alone the obvious economic benefits multiple incomes can have for a family. If by unashamedly limiting decisions on family immigration to economics alone the objective is to relieve economic pressure on the benefits system, then why not ban all British people from having a family, unless they meet a minimum income threshold? Is this not just as sensible in achieving the same aim?

Just a Problem

My wife and my story pales to the length and suffering that so many other migrants, and indeed types of migrants, go through. But after the ends we have gone to - to abide by rules we don’t agree with and to achieve nothing but what we are entitled to under article 8 of the Human Rights Act, I personally have had enough of feeling targeted. What I find so crushing, is the political environment that this proposal has been made in. The right to a private family life no longer seems to be worthy as a right at all.

In a highly informative speech to the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI) AGM in October 2011, Dr Helena Wray deconstructed the government’s position quite concisely, saying that family migration:

is something that is not conceptualised… really in terms of the rights of UK residents and citizens to live with their family members from abroad. It is simply a problem.

Indeed this right is attacked on two fronts: by the cold economic justifications of the minimum income threshold, and attacked by principle with the UK Bill of Rights proposals, seemingly intended to omit article 8.

Representation

As a group of people sharing the strongest, emotional bonds with immigrants sponsors have everything to fight for in representing ourselves and our families. This is a debate fixated on economic cost, and negligent towards this most sensitive of human rights.

As such, the Family Immigration Alliance blogsite serves its second purpose. Not only is it aimed at offering catharsis and a gathering point for sponsors, but also to collate the experiences in a clear and accessible place. The more public the experiences are of UK sponsors – citizens and permanent residents – the more the government will be forced to acknowledge them, before economics is permitted to separate our families.