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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

Do you think the new £38K income visa threshold for UK spouse visas is fair?

936 replies

zendeveloper · 04/12/2023 19:32

It is set at the same level as for work visas.

Feels completely crazy to me, but then, I am also an immigrant (although the changes don't affect me), so probably too sensitive to the topic. Would be interesting to hear MN opinion.

OP posts:
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ElevenSeven · 05/12/2023 02:24

“The largest impacts will fall on lower-income British citizens, and particularly women and younger people who tend to earn lower wages.”

But this is exactly what it’s designed for. They want to reduce low-income immigration. Polls quite clearly show the majority of people want immigration numbers reduced; there are going to be people affected by it, that’s the whole rationale behind it.

Topsyturvy78 · 05/12/2023 02:31

Two of my sons carers are from European countries. I don't think they will be earning that much. They live in a HMO the house he lives are always short staffed.

elp30 · 05/12/2023 03:32

The income-threshold increase for spouses of UK Citizens is significantly unfair.

I am the wife of a UK Citizen and my children are dual USA/UK Citizens and we live in the USA.

For the past few years, my husband has wanted to return to the UK and be closer to his parents. His parents are in their 70's and his mother has a life-limiting illness and it's a very huge pull to be back to spend as much time as he can with them and help in their care when needed. We've been waiting for our children to finish high school and university so we can return to the UK together.

My husband is self-employed in the US and his business will not be able to continue in the UK so we would be using the savings route to return and he would start another business once we arrive. That savings route is £62,500. That's not even counting the cost of the visas leading up to ILR and citizenship and the yearly health surcharge and all our other moving costs and the money to start another business. It's been a very long time saving but we were very close. Now that the threshold has been increased, we have to prepare ourselves for a few more years of savings and we have genuine worry about the health of my husband's mother.

Our son is a healthcare worker in the US and has expressed interest in moving to the UK with us and work for the NHS (he's a UK citizen). He has a partner whom he'd like to bring with him but as the threshold has now been increased to £37,600, it doesn't look like he would be able to earn enough money to sponsor his US-born partner to join him. It's very upsetting.

elp30 · 05/12/2023 03:40

Oops, I meant £38,700

Original poster
zendeveloper · 05/12/2023 05:26

bombastix · 05/12/2023 00:35

A list of nations would be unlawful. You cannot discriminate by country lawfully. Income is however legal and will hold up on court. This policy does discriminate, but it does so lawfully.

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At the moment the whole immigration law discriminates by country of origin, I don't think what you are saying is true at all.

OP posts:
Kokeshi123 · 05/12/2023 05:31

Until recently, EU and non-EU spouses got different rules. Not sure it's true that spouse rules have to be the same for every country.

Rosiiee · 05/12/2023 05:41

Have only read the first few pages so maybe someone else already raised this question but wondering if the UK have essentially shot themselves in the foot? Won’t the intake of ‘low’ earning healthcare workers drop now? People deciding to leave the UK because they can’t bring their spouse/family? And isn’t that also encouraging illegal immigration by making the legal pathways so difficult?

Anycrispsleft · 05/12/2023 05:53

RedRidingGood · 05/12/2023 00:38

Hi, is this 38k income threshold something the govt is talking about or is it actually in place? I'm reading about it on the Telegraph but I'm not clear on this. Surely it takes time for something like this to be put into place?

I'm an immigrant in the UK (originally from Asia) and a so-called high income earner. I am here on a Spousal visa but both DH and I are well above the income threshold. Still, I think it is a shame that there are people supporting this policy, it's obvious that Cleverly is using this as a way to get more Tory votes.

The trouble is, people think all immigrants and foreigners are low income earners, here to leech off etc. This isn't true, there's a wide variety of people. Also what % of spousal visas would consist of sham marriages? Why put something in place that will affect genuine couple to weed out what would be a very small % of people who are using it as a means to obtain a visa. I recall my immigration lawyer here mentioning that statistically it's a very small percentage that tries to manipulate the system.

This truly is a xenophobic policy.

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It will be interesting to see how the political situation changes if the UK government manages to achieve its stated aim of reducing low paid/unskilled immigration. I work in Switzerland and am part of the influx of high skilled immigration - wages are high for the highly skilled but prices are high for everyone and Swiss find themselves increasingly on the edges of their own economy. The Swiss nationalist/populist party, the SVP, have long been the biggest party and increase their share of the vote at every election. Swiss would also claim to be against low skilled migration but they seem to be pretty unhappy about the high skilled too.

GreenwichOrTwicks · 05/12/2023 05:57

CormorantStrikesBack · 04/12/2023 20:04

No he doesn’t. So that’s it then. They can’t get married. 🤷‍♀️

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But she could go there? What v are the Canadian rules about spouse incomes?

Anycrispsleft · 05/12/2023 05:57

Rosiiee · 05/12/2023 05:41

Have only read the first few pages so maybe someone else already raised this question but wondering if the UK have essentially shot themselves in the foot? Won’t the intake of ‘low’ earning healthcare workers drop now? People deciding to leave the UK because they can’t bring their spouse/family? And isn’t that also encouraging illegal immigration by making the legal pathways so difficult?

I can't see how it can fail to reduce the numbers of people looking to take up e.g. care and NHS jobs in the UK, meaning costs will go up. And at the same time the UK government has done things like reduce the bursaries for nursing courses and limit the number of university places for medics. If they don't want more foreigners they need to invest in training locals. And they would need to have done that first!

SutWytTi · 05/12/2023 06:02

GreenwichOrTwicks · 05/12/2023 05:57

But she could go there? What v are the Canadian rules about spouse incomes?

Show quote history

And this demonstrates why this policy is so stupid. We're talking about a young couple choosing to base themselves in Canada instead of the UK, at a time when the UK really needs young people.

Rosiiee · 05/12/2023 06:04

@Anycrispsleft i used to be a nurse back in Australia. A lot of healthcare support workers were from countries like Nepal, Sri Lanka, India and were very open about wanting to bring their spouse and kids that they had left behind. I can only suspect that’s similar to a lot of workers in the UK. Without any hope of family reunification they might simply decide to return to their home country? Isn’t the NHS already struggling as it is? The reality is a lot of British born workers just don’t want the low paying jobs and that’s where the other nationalities come in. This post isn’t intended to be racist at all, it’s just something I noticed as a nurse.

SutWytTi · 05/12/2023 06:11

ElevenSeven · 05/12/2023 02:24

“The largest impacts will fall on lower-income British citizens, and particularly women and younger people who tend to earn lower wages.”

But this is exactly what it’s designed for. They want to reduce low-income immigration. Polls quite clearly show the majority of people want immigration numbers reduced; there are going to be people affected by it, that’s the whole rationale behind it.

If the government wanted to reduce low income immigration they would stop allowing businesses to pay lower wages to workers on visas (currently allowed to pay just 80% for certain jobs on shortage list).

In truth what the government wants is to appear tough to appease the something must be done vote, whilst actually just making things worse in health and other vital sectors.

ElevenSeven · 05/12/2023 06:18

@SutWytTi that change was also announced yesterday.

Zamzamzamdeedah · 05/12/2023 06:23

38k is too much, 18k was too little. Many have no recourse to public funds on visa so they can't get state supoort if something goes wrong, finding job may take time (if they are skilled they can try getting own visa and hopefully get it). I think 26k would be fair.

Workworkandmoreworknow · 05/12/2023 06:33

lkwhjis · 04/12/2023 19:46

It’s high. As long as we have jobs that the lazy 5 million brits on out of work benefits don’t want to do.

5 million? Unemployment stats stand at 1.45 million of over 16s being unemployed 😑

renthead · 05/12/2023 06:33

But she could go there? What v are the Canadian rules about spouse incomes?

There are no income requirements for Canadian citizens sponsoring spouses to come to Canada. You just have to sign something that states that the spouse will have no recourse to social assistance for a period of time- I think it's about 5 years.

The system makes much more sense IMO. DH and I met in the UK and once we had our first DD, we wanted to come to Canada and I sponsored him. It was his job we were initially coming for, not mine, because I had to do a long and expensive bridging course to practice my profession in Canada. If Canada had the UK system then we wouldn't have been able to come to Canada at all because I had no job or income there. So we would have stayed where we were. Now eight years later we earn a combined income of nearly $250K in Canada and we contribute to society in two shortage professions. Canada was the winner by allowing me to bring my DH there.

The UK system is shortsighted. It's complete madness.

CharlotteRumpling · 05/12/2023 06:37

Rosiiee · 05/12/2023 05:41

Have only read the first few pages so maybe someone else already raised this question but wondering if the UK have essentially shot themselves in the foot? Won’t the intake of ‘low’ earning healthcare workers drop now? People deciding to leave the UK because they can’t bring their spouse/family? And isn’t that also encouraging illegal immigration by making the legal pathways so difficult?

We will have to look after our own elderly. That's the bottom line.

historyrepeatz · 05/12/2023 06:42

It does raise questions on how people would survive. Where I live it now in London suburbs it costs almost 1200 to rent a one bed flat. This was nearly our mortgage on our 3 bed EOT house 15 years ago with two full time incomes. We did not find paying it easy.

A 38k income would be about 2,400 take home without private pension contributions? That might be doable if your rent or mortgage is low but will that be the case for those coming in now that don't have access to housing association /council properties, benefits etc could they actually rent a larger property, pay all utilities, transport and living costs for themselves?

CormorantStrikesBack · 05/12/2023 06:45

And of course the thing which nobody mentions for fear of being labelled racist is that why these steps are being taken thousands of people are still crossing the channel unchecked in boats and being put up in hotels, etc. maybe DD’s bf will have to do that.

HumanBurrito · 05/12/2023 06:46

I moved abroad and married my low earning husband when New labour were in government. Not sure how i was supposed to anticipate Brexit at that point 🙄

CharlotteRumpling · 05/12/2023 06:47

Basically, don't date a foreigner. Especially not a low earning foreigner.As a pp said, quite unironically.

CormorantStrikesBack · 05/12/2023 06:48

renthead · 05/12/2023 06:33

But she could go there? What v are the Canadian rules about spouse incomes?

There are no income requirements for Canadian citizens sponsoring spouses to come to Canada. You just have to sign something that states that the spouse will have no recourse to social assistance for a period of time- I think it's about 5 years.

The system makes much more sense IMO. DH and I met in the UK and once we had our first DD, we wanted to come to Canada and I sponsored him. It was his job we were initially coming for, not mine, because I had to do a long and expensive bridging course to practice my profession in Canada. If Canada had the UK system then we wouldn't have been able to come to Canada at all because I had no job or income there. So we would have stayed where we were. Now eight years later we earn a combined income of nearly $250K in Canada and we contribute to society in two shortage professions. Canada was the winner by allowing me to bring my DH there.

The UK system is shortsighted. It's complete madness.

@renthead Does the social assistance include healthcare do you know? Just trying to work out if healthcare would be possible for Dd in Canada. She is in and out of hospital here regularly, on first name terms with a&e staff! 🙈

CormorantStrikesBack · 05/12/2023 06:49

CharlotteRumpling · 05/12/2023 06:47

Basically, don't date a foreigner. Especially not a low earning foreigner.As a pp said, quite unironically.

It seems it doesn’t matter what the foreigner earns which really doesn’t make sense. It’s what you, the U.K. person earns.

CharlotteRumpling · 05/12/2023 06:50

Ah, I stand corrected. Foreigners shouldn't date low earning Brits then.