Deported grandmother : what is the government trying to prove

[alwaysprepare]

There is a story of a woman originally from Singapore who lives here and has been married to a Brit for 27 years, they have 2 kids and a grandchild.
Her parents had been ill and she has spent the last few years going home to take care of them. They have now passed away. She had indefinite leave to remain which has been revoked and was apparently taken on a Sunday by authorities and sent to a detention centre before being put on a flight with £12 and the clothes on her back. Her husband is poorly after a heart bypass, I think it was.

You are not allowed to leave the country for a certain amount of time on the visa she has, but she probably needed to take care of ailing parents. Also Singapore does not Allow dual citizenship which maybe why she did not apply for UK passport as that probably would have been tricky for her parent emergencies etc.

We are no better than Trump.

Sorry cannot paste it right now, but it's on Google.

Yes Caroll of course it's okay - he is a British citizen, he can come and go as he pleases.

ALWAYS a requirement to prove you had 'adequate' income so as not to have 'recourse to public funds'

In practice they would take into account where you were going to live (e.g. cheaper areas would need less income) and whether you had extended family support (e.g. living with in laws or other rent/mortgage-free accommodation). So, not the same thing at all as an arbitrary cut-off.

Out of interest how many people roughly in an average year, do you suppose, with incomes of less than 18k are meeting and falling in love with people from outside the EU and marrying them and wanting to bring them here anyway?

"But that wasn't £18k british income a year. We arrived with a few thousand pounds in a UK bank account we opened back in NZ. We don't even need a return ticket for me as the bank statements show I have enough to purchase a return. We were confident we can find jobs here and if we don't, we'll just go to Australia."

That doesn't sound like the same kind of visa at all.

When we did this, in 2002, we applied for a settlement visa. There would be no return ticket since the purpose of a settlement visa is to settle - i.e. not leave, the UK.

You had to show that you had sufficient means and accommodation to live - permanently - in the UK without recourse to public funds. No relation to a return ticket at all.

Out of interest how many people roughly in an average year, do you suppose, with incomes of less than 18k are meeting and falling in love with people from outside the EU and marrying them and wanting to bring them here anyway?

It comes up very regularly on various forums for British expats who are struggling to move home.

Bear in mind two things...

One - the British citizen often has to move back first to find a job, leaving their spouse and (often) children behind.

Two - that the income requirement gets higher if you have children. "For applicants who are also bringing dependent children the post-2012 threshold rises by £3,800 for one child and £2,400 for each additional child." (www.migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/reports/the-minimum-income-requirement-for-non-eea-family-members-in-the-uk-2/)

"Out of interest how many people roughly in an average year, do you suppose, with incomes of less than 18k are meeting and falling in love with people from outside the EU and marrying them and wanting to bring them here anyway?"

Well as I understand it, some Pakistani communities have levels of cousin marriage in excess of 50% (it's customary to marry a cousin from Pakistan), and there are moreover more Mirpuris in Britain than in Mirpur. So potentially quite a considerable number!

I know quite a few cases where the income cutoff has been a problem for PhD students who haven't been able to stay post-completion because there is some issue with student visas running out, and no permanent job to get another visa. It's madness, turning our backs as a country on a highly educated, highly qualified group of people.

As PPs have pointed out, it's not as simple as saying "if you want to stay, get dual citizenship" - not every country offers this, and the specifics can be complex. In this case, Singapore deprives you of your Singaporean citizenship if you try to take up dual nationality. This point has already been made by a previous poster in the thread, so I can't understand why people are still saying she's silly not to have applied for dual citizenship.

God, this is the very worst of mumsnet. What is it with some threads that somehow turn into the daily mail on acid? Some people here would look right at home brandishing their pitchforks.

FrenchLavendar - "The exact number of people prevented from coming to the UK due to the threshold is not known, although in 2012 the government projected this figure would be between 13,600 and 17,800 per year"

www.migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/reports/the-minimum-income-requirement-for-non-eea-family-members-in-the-uk-2/

I applied for ILR on the basis of marriage in 2004. My memory of the details is rather hazy, but we definitely did not have to demonstrate a specific income of my British DH only (which is the current situation, meaning that a British SAHP or low-earner with a high-earning foreign spouse is also scuppered) - merely that we could support ourselves without recourse to public funds.

But there must have been some guidelines as to what was considered to be self supporting, Elements?

One of the main pre-2012 differences is that finances were considered as a FAMILY - in other words, the British partner could be a SAHP, or work part time, and the whole family's income would be taken into account. Now, despite the headline figure for not depending on "public funds" being 18K, a family where the non-British breadwinner earns many multiples of that would still be separated by the Home Office.

People asking who would be affected by this -
www.migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/reports/the-minimum-income-requirement-for-non-eea-family-members-in-the-uk-2/
About 40% of British workers do not earn enough to sponsor even a spouse, let alone a spouse and two children. 69% of women do not earn enough. About 50% of all workers in the North, Scotland, and N Ireland do not earn enough to allow a foreign spouse to live with them.

Also for the "public funds" argument - even when the foreign spouse is allowed to live with their partner, they are not eligible for benefits for 5 years anyway.

Of course, if we are trampling over the human right to a family life for the sake of the public purse, why not start snatching the children of the poor?

Income rules have been in place for a while. I knew a student once quite a number of years ago who wanted to bring his mother to the UK and he couldn't because he didn't have a job. And couldn't till he earned a certain amount.

She most recently entered the UK in 2013 after 8 years of living in Singapore. Given that the maximum visa she would have been on is 6 months, I'm surprised that she was surprised to have immigration knocking on the door in 2017...

TheElementsSong The salary cap isnt for ILR it's for a spousal visa AFAIK. ILR is granted on being here for a number of years (you need P60s as proof), she had ILR but broke the terms of it by leaving the country for more than 2 years.

Out of interest how many people roughly in an average year, do you suppose, with incomes of less than 18k are meeting and falling in love with people from outside the EU and marrying them and wanting to bring them here anyway?

Bear in mind that it's the British spouse who has to earn above this level, no matter how much their non EU spouse earns. I know someone married to a Canadian (with ILR in the UK), who works for a multi-national company. Their children were born in the UK; the Canadian spouse was then offered a fantastic job abroad. The British spouse is a SAHP while they're abroad, as unable to get a work permit in their current country. Their plan has always been to return to the UK when the children reach secondary school age, but they won't be able to unless the British spouse is able to get a well enough paid job to sponsor the family - regardless of savings or total family income.

Madness.

I think part of the problem here is that people are assuming Home Office rules are clear, easy to understand and applied consistently and fairly.

They often are not.

For example, I recall my husband applying for British citizenship. He was expected to send his US passport in to the Home Office, then they would keep it for an unspecified period that was likely to be at least a year.

They made it clear on the application form that there was no way to contact them by phone, and that they were unlikely to respond to contact by post.

Cross-posted with Holdme.

DickToPhone I don't remember what are the requirements and indeed what the visa I applied for is called. It's back in 2004. It was very straightforward so never made a dent in my memory. And being young and carefree helps :)

What I do remember was him not having a UK income was never a problem. I don't have a return ticket to NZ. We don't have a lot of money. Just about £3k and we opened UK bank accounts from NZ. We had just graduated from our PhDs. He moved to NZ as a child but was born in the UK with English parents.

If cases like ours managed to get whatever visa it was to come and live, then there couldn't have been any requirements on money.

The government are damned if they do, damned if they don't.

People want stricter immigration controls, government does it. Government are then criticized for doing it!

Yet if she hadn't been deported, people would be complaining about that too!

Twogoats, how about they go for the humane, sane approach then? If ignorant Little Englanders want to damn the government for so-called immigration controls, despite all evidence that immigration is a public good for the UK, then really who gives a damn.

so-called LAX immigration controls, sorry

Rhayader

Must have been the spousal visa then, my memory has gone to pot. I only clearly remember the "no recourse to public funds" thing. Oh, and having to go through numerous stages over a few years, at not inconsiderable expense and effort, en route to naturalising as a British citizen.

Income rules have been in place for a while. I knew a student once quite a number of years ago who wanted to bring his mother to the UK and he couldn't because he didn't have a job. And couldn't till he earned a certain amount.

His mother? IIRC there isn't really any mechanism to bring one's parents here to live anymore.

I think one of the problems is that few people know how hard it is to go through this and how hard it is to meet the criteria. The criteria having nothing to do with what the country needs or the real circumstances of the couples.

DP and I are now in Dublin as it became too much to keep fighting, keep paying for permission to stay, keep looking at every nativist and xenophobic change to the rules that the Home Office put in place.

We have seen visa rules change retrospectively. We have seen new rules added that dont make a material difference to our engagement with the state (e.g. benefits) but make it harder to stay and other countries more attractive. £35,000 earnings for the privilege of staying in the UK with friends and family? Never mind the spouse rules for coming in. Visa rules are so tightly thought out (or changed - how do you plan for that?) that breaking them to stay with loved ones becomes the only viable option.

I am all for a clear, fair, transparent, socially and economically useful (imagine how dull the UK would be if it were all british white people living here), evidence based immigration policy. I would also welcome case-by-case discussions when it comes to deportations as this one which, even to those who genuflect at the changing visa rule book, have to at least acknowledge serves no real purpose other than separating a women from her husband.

"But you're ignoring the fact that the Home Office's OWN RULES say that she was allowed to stay outside the country for longer than two years if she was caring for relatives.

She hasn't broken the rules of her visa. The Home Office has."

Except that that isn't the case. The proximate reason for staying outside of the country longer than two years is NOT her mother's illness. Her family moved to Singapore in 1992. The family remained until 1998.

So the reason she stayed out of the UK for longer than 2 years is because of a decision to live in Singapore. Not her mother's illness at all.

It seems that the mother got ill in or around 1998 and died in 1999. www.straitstimes.com/singapore/singaporean-fighting-deportation-from-britain

So her ILR would in fact have lapsed in 1994. A subsequent sick mother does not change the fact of that.

Humane, sane approach. Yes you can stay. No problem. You can even go home for 2 years if you like. Longer if you want to care for family members. No sorry you can't live there for most of your life and choose when you want to come back.

Seems humane to me.