After 20 years of marriage, wife from Bristol now faces deportation

Source :Bristol Post

http://www.bristolpost.co.uk/20-years-marriage-wife-faces-deportation/story-23169702-detail/story.html

'Mr Draper, 59, a property developer, said: "After more than a year of visa negotiations involving lawyers and wranglings with the court, our faith in the immigration system has been totally destroyed. We don't know why Mae wasn't given a one-on-one interview at the time of applying, in which our circumstances could have been explained properly, instead of forms containing tick boxes.

"Mae is a trained midwife and wants to work and live in this country but is being denied that opportunity, despite us having been married for nearly 20 years.

"The UK Border Agency should not be using immigration rules in this way, to keep a decent hard-working family apart."

Don't take my mum away, Hanham teenager begs immigration authorities : http://theweekin.co.uk/uncategorized/dont-take-mum-away-hanham-teenager-begs-immigration-authorities/

'A DVD highlighting the Save Mae Campaign has been produced, in which the couple’s 14-year-old daughter Rhian, a student at the John Cabot Academy in Kingswood, pleads with the immigration authorities not to take her mum away, saying: “My family is being torn apart by the UK Government.” '

Account of an interview in a British Embassy, by the spouse of a British citizen #mustread

'I received a phone call on <day> October 2013 and was told that I need to attend a face to face interview in the British Embassy in Beijing on <day> October 2013 at <time>. It was 4 months after we submitted my UK spouse visa application although we meet all the requirements.

'I wanted to confirm my appointment in person before the interview because it’s about the future happiness of my husband and I, I just could not afford to make any mistakes. So I left my hometown, arrived in Beijing two days before the interview. It took me 3 hours and 10 min on the plane, another 5 hours on buses, trains and tubes, so it was about 8 hours in total, the transport cost about £350 return, and the hotel £100 for 3 nights.

'I arrived in the Embassy in the early morning the day before the interview, and was told by the entrance guards that no advance information of any appointments can be given. It seemed like I would just have to wait at the door until my name was called on the electronic board (if there was one).

House of Commons Hansard Debates for 14 March 2013 (pt 0004)

http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmhansrd/cm130314/debtext/130314-0004.htm#13031445000004

This is a good parliamentary debate on the impact of the rules. Some of our friends in Parliament - Kerry McCarthy, Kate Green, Fiona Mactaggart, and Virendra Sharma - all made good points and importantly raised a number of cases similar to those we have been documenting at http://britcits.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/stories .

This humanises the debate . It's not about numbers and dog whistle politics, it's about real people whose families are suffering because of these unfair rules.

Also mirrored at http://www.scribd.com/doc/130626192/Hansard-14-March-2013 .

This is the first time this has really been raised in the Commons, and hopefully lays the groundwork for follow-up activity. As we said in the post introducing the rules ( http://britcits.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/introduction.html ) - The rules were introduced by the 'back door' - first secondary legislation, and then (when the courts ruled against this - the 'Alvi' decision), emergency legislation was pushed through the House of Lords (as the Commons was in recess) without a proper debate. This is a profoundly undemocratic way to go about introducing such a change will has affected the lives of so many in such a dramatic way.

Excerpts :

Mr X needs to return to the UK to look after his elderly parents who are recovering from cancer. They used to go on a fairly regular basis to visit him, his wife and child, but they are now too ill and infirm to visit. Mr X has a professional job in Thailand, which he has held down for a long time. It is a decent salary according to local rates, but it is not the equivalent of the £18,600 earnings limit in the UK. It is enough to provide him with the same living standards in Thailand as he would have if he were on that sort of salary in the UK—it is obviously a lot cheaper to live there. Under the new rules, Mr X will have to leave his wife behind while he finds work in the UK, which he is not prepared to do—by which I mean not that he is not prepared to find work, but that he is not prepared to leave his wife behind. They are now considering moving to Spain instead, so that he is reasonably close to his parents and it will be easier for his wife to join him, perhaps becoming a Spanish national, which would then allow them to enter the UK.

The second case features Mr Z and Ms Z who came to see me in my constituency surgery a few weeks ago. They were married in the UK in March 2011. She is British citizen and her husband, who had been living and working in the UK for six years under a valid work permit, is South African. He was in highly paid professional work in the UK, but soon after they married, he was made redundant. Although he could probably have secured another job at a similarly high salary in the UK, they decided to take a chance and move to Cape Town for a couple of years.
After two years in South Africa, however, they have decided that they want to return to the UK, but the rules changed while they were away. He will not be allowed to join his wife in the UK unless she earns more than £18,600—despite the fact that he is a highly skilled computer programmer who could expect to earn perhaps £60,000 a year in the UK. Before they left for Cape Town, my woman constituent was earning £26,000 a year as a pub manager. As she has been out of work for two years in Cape Town, however, there is a gap in her CV, so she is unlikely to be able to walk straight back into a manager’s position, although she aspires to do so in a couple of years’ time. Wages in the pub trade are not particularly high, so it is likely she will start on a salary below £18,600. As I said, they would have a joint income as a family of about £75,000 because her husband could get a well-paid job, but under the new rules it is based on her income, so he would not be able to join her.

The final case to which I want to refer is that of a constituent whose girlfriend is based in Hong Kong, but is of Philippine origin. He wants her to join him in the United Kingdom, but they cannot marry. She was married to an abusive husband in the Philippines—she fled to Hong Kong to get away from him—but divorce is illegal in the Philippines, which in itself raises interesting questions. What happens if someone from the Philippines comes to this country and wants to marry a British citizen? What will be the impact on that person’s immigration status if that is not allowed?
The couple cannot live in the Philippines together, which is an option that they explored. If my constituent were in a relationship with an undivorced woman in the Philippines, he could face seven years in jail and she could face three to four years.
It turned out, after we had looked into it, that my constituent’s income is just enough for him to qualify under the rules. He came to see me because he had heard about the £62,000 savings limit, and thought that he was expected to have that much money in the bank on top of his income. However, if he had earned just £100 a month less, he would not have been able to bring his partner to the United Kingdom either. They were exploring the possible options. His partner was considering going to Canada, and he thought that perhaps he would be able to join her there.
The situation is ridiculous. My constituent has family responsibilities, and is settled in employment in the UK. The fact that he would have been forced to go to the other side of the world to be with his partner when she could join him here seems nonsensical to me.

People are increasingly working and studying abroad. People are going off to university in other countries, meeting their partners there, and then not being able to return to the United Kingdom with their partners until they have established themselves on the career ladder. It is not uncommon now for graduates to start work—if they can start work; they may be on unpaid or paid internships or low-paid jobs for the first couple of years after graduating—but to be unable to bring their partners into this country. I recognise the need to ensure that new migrants to the UK do not increase the burden on the British taxpayer, but many couples survive on less than the average income without being a burden on the taxpayer.

Kevin
 
“I haven’t seen my wife and son in nearly a year and my family in Britain hasn’t met or held my son.”
 
Kevin is a British citizen who met his wife while travelling. They have been together for five years.
 
After Kevin was made redundant by his insurance-company employer, they decided to live in Asia for a couple of years. While in Hong Kong, they were blessed with a beautiful son.
 
As Kevin does not have a degree, finding a suitable job in Asia proved to be near impossible, but with a child to look after it was imperative that Kevin have a good job and provide for his family.
 
So Kevin decided to return to the UK and six months later he obtained a permanent job with a basic salary of £16,000, plus commission. Living in the regions, this could go a long way (it is close to the median average income in parts of the UK - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_in_the_United_Kingdom ). Two months into this job, however, the government brought in the minimum threshold, meaning that his target earnings would keep him way below the threshold.

With bonuses the £18,600 may be achievable, but given the volatile nature of sales, there might be the odd month where he cannot maintain the annual average required, which means that his wife’s visa application would be rejected (as the rules state that the lowest month is used when calculating income, rather than the average, which will impact people whose income is partly made up of commission, as well as some types of self-employed people; a very large segment of the working population may fail despite earning about the £18,600 threshold).
 
Kevin has been living apart from his wife and near-one-year-old son for almost a year. He has already missed his son’s first Christmas; he will miss his first birthday, and he will only see his son’s first steps on Skype, rather than in person.
 
Kevin is close to a nervous breakdown; whenever he sees a family together with a toddler his heart sinks and he is unable to put aside everything he is missing out on.
 
Kevin’s wife’s family think Kevin has chosen to leave his wife and son in their home country rather than bring her to the UK. This has brought shame on his wife's family as well as embarrassment. Kevin’s immediate British family have neither met nor held his son. His son does not know his British family. 

The new rules are a prison sentence for Kevin and his family.
 
Even if Kevin were to find a job paying £18,600, the visa process requires that he wait six months before applying for a spouse visa. This is far too long, especially when you have been living apart for a year already. 

This Tory government is demonstrating how out of touch it is with the people of Britain today.
 
For the sake of everybody’s sanity, welfare, physical and mental health, these rules must be scrapped sooner rather than later.

Damar

“I served in the British army, defended British lives and the British way of life, and now am kept apart from my own wife and child... ”.

Damar is a Hong Kong-born British national, a former Gurkha soldier and now an IT professional – and another victim of this government’s new immigration rules impacting on families.

Damar lives in Hampshire and his initial plan was to move to UK with his wife and 10-year-old daughter, both Filipino nationals, earlier this summer. The said law, however, prevents this, forcing him to be apart from his family. A man who served in the British army, defending British lives and the British way of life, is now being prevented from having a life with his own wife and child.

Damar and his family decided to build a future in Britain in response to the IT skills shortage and to
provide his daughter with a better education. Damar has a science degree majoring in computing and
networking (BScCN) and a Master of Science in Information Technology (MScIT). With over 12 years of IT work experience, and 9 years of exemplary military service before that in the Brigade of Gurkhas, part of the British Army, he is confident that he would be a net contributor to the economy and community.

Damar is, and has always been, an asset not a burden, to UK. It’s clear this unacceptably harsh law will prevent British citizens, including some who have served in the British army, from settling in the UK.

The pain of separation from his wife and daughter is indescribable and brings to the fore the ignorance of the Home Secretary – someone who does not, or chooses not to, understand the impact of the rules she has imposed and devastation being wreaked. The enforced separation has taken its toll on the physical and psychological health of Damar’s family, with insomnia and depression taking a toll on their health.

This government, despite a manifesto claim, is neither family-friendly nor one with morals or common sense.

Damar is aware of British public’s frustration with immigration abuse and sham marriages, but the
Government has chosen to punish poorer and rural British citizens instead of genuinely targeting problem areas. All are shocked that this government places financial conditions on love, family and human rights.

Damar is forced to maintain living expenses in UK and Hong Kong, two equally expensive places. To
sponsor his wife and daughter in the UK, he has to find a job with a salary of at least £22,400 per annum.

The Government is claiming the law is fair, pro-family, and beneficial to the British economy, reduces immigrant numbers by hundreds of thousands to tens of thousands, and upholds the principles of human rights. A complete farce. If preventing certain EU citizens – British citizens with non-EU spouses – from living together will reduce immigrant numbers to the level claimed, it’s wrong in principle and in its estimate of 'success'.

Damar’s desire to live here doesn’t involve sponging on welfare benefits. It’s to work and provide his
family with a better quality of life in the country he risked his life to defend.

This law is an attack on human rights (including a fundamental right to family life), and the UK’s
reputation as an advocate of human rights and open and fair democracy is fast being eroded. It has closed its door to its own citizens; it has, however, provided enough ground to be challenged in court, which it will be, and thus more taxpayers’ money will be frittered away.

How do such rules safeguard taxpayers and the British economy, as the Government has claimed?