UK’s New Visa Rules Causing Anguish for Families

Local Editor

New financial rules for migrants from outside the European Union are tearing UK families apart and causing anguish, a group of MPs and peers said.

They added that thousands of Britons had been unable to bring a non-EU spouse to the UK since July 2012, when minimum earnings requirements were introduced.

"Children were also separated from a parent," the parliamentary group said.
The Home Office said the rules were designed to ease the burden of migration on the taxpayer.

Rules that came into force a year ago require any British citizen who wants to sponsor their non-European spouse's visa to be able to show they earn at least £18,600 a year, rising to £22,400 to sponsor a child, and a further £2,400 for each further child.

The inquiry by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Migration, which is calling for an independent review of the minimum income requirement, looked at more than 175 cases from families affected by the rules.
Forty-five claimed their inability to meet the income threshold had led to the separation of children, including British children, from a non-EU parent, the group said.

In one case, a woman from outside Europe had been separated from her British husband and two sons, including a five-month-old baby she had been breastfeeding.
Wider evidence suggested that 47% of the UK working population last year would have failed to meet the income level to sponsor a non-European Economic Area partner, the group said.

Baroness Hamwee, chairwoman of the inquiry and Liberal Democrat home affairs lead in the House of Lords, said the parliamentary group had been "struck by the evidence showing just how many British people have been kept apart from partners, children and elderly relatives".

"These rules are causing anguish for families and, counter to their original objectives, may actually be costing the public purse," she said.

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team