The Home Office's stringent visa regulations are leaving thousands of children to spend Christmas with one of their parents trapped overseas, prompting NGOs to label the UK "one of the worst countries in the world for family reunions."
Before a non-UK spouse can apply for a visa to live here, the UK-based spouse must earn at least £29,000 per family immigration regulations.
The Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) is reviewing the previous government's decision to raise the minimum income criteria for these visas from £18,600 to £38,700 by the spring of 2025. The increase has been set at £29,000 for the time being.
The organisation Reunite Families UK has conducted research into the damaging impact of the minimum income requirement on children who they say are hidden victims of what they describe as ‘cruel immigration policies’ like this. They are submitting this research to the MAC.
Working with the children’s charity Coram, they analysed research from 745 families in this situation and have separately interviewed a small group of children. The research found that 67% of the separated families’ children got to see the parent forced to live abroad less than once a year, with 85% of these families saying that the minimum income requirement was a barrier to family reunion.
The research found that the policy has left families vulnerable to poverty and facing isolation and mental health challenges, with children feeling angry, confused and distressed.
One child told researchers that other children had things around them that the child could not have “and that was all due to the fact that [the child’s mother] was trying to save up to see my dad”.
One child was told at a tribunal by a Home Office official that their mother could take care of them by Skype, according to the research.
British citizen Leighton Allen, 29, met his partner Sophie Nyenza, 31, a Tanzanian citizen, while on a trip to Tanzania two and a half years ago. The couple fell in love and Nyenza became pregnant. 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 job in retail to allow Nyenza to apply for a visa.
“This policy is honestly destroying us. It’s saying that only the rich can fall in love with someone abroad,” said Allen.
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Sean (who did not want his surname used), a South African national, is forcibly separated from his British wife Jayne. Jayne grew up in South Africa after moving there with her family at the age of five. They have been together for 18 years and have two children together, aged 10 and 16. They decided to relocate to the UK but Jayne is here alone trying to earn enough money to reach the minimum income requirement so that her husband and children can apply for a visa.
“It’s like having your family held to ransom,” said Sean. “I’m trying to make Christmas the best it can be for the children who are here with me in South Africa, while my wife will be having her Christmas lunch alone in the UK without me or her children. I wake up at 2am worrying about the 40-odd pages of visa requirements.”
Caroline Coombs, director of Reunite Families UK, said: “The UK remains one of the worst countries in the world for family reunion. We urge the Migration Advisory Committee to listen to these experiences being shared with them and help ensure citizens and long-term residents of the UK and their children are no longer devastated by these cruel policies.”
Carol Homden, CEO of Coram, said: “For over 12 years babies and children have been cut off from parents by a stringent financial test for British or settled people sponsoring their partner to join them from abroad. It is high time that the impacts on children of this policy are properly reviewed.”
Home Office sources said that the home secretary had commissioned the MAC to look at this issue and that the review was expected to take approximately nine months. During that period the minimum income threshold will remain £29,000.
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