Thousands of children are looking forward to Christmas together with their parents abroad, frustrated by restrictive visa policies leading to Home Office charities calling the UK ‘one of the worst countries in the world for family reunification’.
Under family immigration rules UK-based spouse to earn a minimum of £29,000 before an application can be made for a visa for a non-UK spouse to live here.
The previous government planned to increase the minimum income threshold from £18,600 to £38,700 for these visas by spring 2025, but this is being reviewed by him. Undergraduate studies Advisory Committee (MAC). For the time being the increase was pegged at £29,000.
The United Families UK organization has conducted an investigation into the damaging impact of the minimum income requirement on children who say they are hidden victims of what they describe as “cruel immigration inception”. Submit this research to the MAC.
Working with the children’s charity Coram, they conducted research from 745 families in this situation and interviewed a small number of children separately. The research found that the children of 67% of families separated by a parent were forced to live abroad less than once a year, with 85% of these families saying that the minimum income requirement was an obstacle to family reunification.
Research has found the policy has left families vulnerable to poverty and facing loneliness and mental health challenges, with children feeling angry, confused and distressed.
One boy told the investigators that other children around him had things that a boy could not have, “and that was all from that.” [the child’s mother] He was trying to keep up with my father.”
One child was told in court that a home office official could take care of their mother by Skype, according to the investigation.
British citizen Leighton Allen, 29. Sophie Nyenza, 31, a Tanzanian citizen, met her partner while on a trip to Tanzania two and a half years ago. The couple fell in love and conceived Nyenza. Since then the couple have been separated, apart from short visits by Allen to Tanzania to see Nyenza and baby Myles, as Allen cannot meet the minimum income requirement with his £12 an hour retail hours for Nyenza to apply for a visa.
“This policy is honestly destroying us. It says only the rich can love someone abroad,” Allen said.
Sean (who did not want his surname used), a South African national, was forcibly separated from his British wife Jayne. Jayne grew up in South Africa after moving there with her family when she was five years old. They have been together for 18 years and have two children together, ages 10 and 16. They have decided to relocate to the UK, but Jayne is here alone trying to earn enough money to meet the minimum income requirement so that her husband and children can apply for visas.
“It’s going to redeem your family,” said Sean. “I’m going to try to make Christmas the best I can for the boys who are with me in South Africa, while my wife will have her Christmas dinner alone in the UK without me or her children. Waking up at 2am worrying about the 40-odd pages of visa requirements.”
Caroline Coombs, director of Families Reunited UK, said: “The UK remains one of the worst countries in the world for family reunification. We encourage the Migration Advisory Committee to listen to these shared experiences and help ensure that citizens and long-term residents of the UK and their children are no longer affected by these cruel policies they will be wasted.”
Carol Homden, CEO of Coram, said: “For 12 years, babies and children have been cut off from their parents through a strict British economic test, or people have arranged for sponsors to join them abroad. It is time that the impact on children of this policy is properly reviewed.”
Home Office sources said that the home secretary has directed the MAC to look into this issue and the review should take about nine months. During that time the minimum income threshold will remain at £29,000.