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

[zendeveloper]

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.

"Completely agree with cancelling them in event of divorce in the future"

This scenario: British man marries foreign woman, she comes to live in the UK and they have children together. The children are British citizens. British husband now becomes highly abusive. Points out to wife that if she leaves she'll lose her right to remain in the UK and share the parenting of their children.

Sounds a bit inhumane to me.

I take your point, and I too live rurally, and there are so few POC locally they are not really relevant to my local debate.

However, my DM lives in a cul de sac in a VERY diverse medium sized town in the Midlands where her neighbours are mostly not UK born because the 2 up 2 down houses around her are mostly owned by BTL landlords. DM bought her house long ago and has watched the town change around her. And most of her neighbours now are East European. They re good, friendly and do look out for her, and she takes parcels in, if requested, as she's mostly at home. The same cannot be said about the taxi companies she uses regularly.

Yes I think it's fair.
And I say this as someone whose husband is on this very visa.

"But when those people see young men arriving on rafts being accommodated in hotels they can't afford for even a few days of holiday, for months, at taxpayers' expense, and then having them lech at their teenage daughters coming out of schools without anyone being able to do anything to disperse them, they feel powerless and become angry at immigrants."

But the OP wasn't asking about asylum policy.

She was asking about immigration policies for British people with foreign spouses, and obviously British children with foreign parents, who will be deeply harmed by the huge uplift in spousal income requirements.

I'm exactly the type of person you're referring to in terms of our income and lifestyle. I also live in an area where there are several migrant hostels within walking distance of our house. One of them is a hotel. I don't feel resentment of the people living in them at all. I have an 18 year old son and a 20 year old son. I imagine them leaving everything they know to try to make a life somewhere where they'll be safe. Remember that most of the people coming by boat are coming from places like Eritrea, Iran, Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan. I can't imagine how utterly depressing it must be for them to be here alone, far from friends and family, with so much uncertainty about their futures. But then I see them as human beings that aren't much different from my own sons. Maybe if I was Islamophobic and reading the Daily Mail every day, and constantly winding myself up by reading bigoted social media posts referring to these migrants as 'men of fighting age' I might feel different, but they're just people.

BTW - young men lech at women all the time. It's horrible. I remember how it made me feel when I was young. But you seem to think there's something particularly heinous about asylum seekers letching at women, why?

"Yes I think it's fair."

I'm going to guess you're a high earner, and think that it's reasonable for poorer families to be torn apart by this change?

Not even share the parenting but lose the right to live in the same country as her children as she would need permission to take them abroad.

The majority of the UKs 68m pop. have zero interaction with the migrants crossing the channel, its racism, pure and simple

I don't think that's true. I live in a 97% white area of the UK, and the POC who have come here seem to like it too. Even the young lads who wore doo-rags a few years ago seem to have given them up. But we don't have migrant hostels housing 200 angry young men making demands. Out here, we make a living to get by, nobody is getting filthy rich. Modestly successful is the goal.

Modestly successful in SE Cornwall means an average public sector monthly income... so a band 5 or 6 nurse, or a teacher's income. Those are considered high-ish earners locally, compared to cleaning B&B accommodation or seasonal hospitality.

"But we don't have migrant hostels housing 200 angry young men making demands."

What 'demands' would those be?

As I said, I have two migrant hostels that are walking distance from my home. I live in an area which is pretty deprived - but predominantly non-white. There's very little complaining and angst about migrants or the migrant hostel on local facebook pages. And that's despite the fact that the area has suffered hugely and visibly from the fallout of a decade of austerity.

I don't think it's the case that local people are blase about the huge increase in population caused by immigration, and the impact this is having on communities in the context of collapsing public services, I think they just don't dehumanise and blame immigrants themselves for the faiings of government immigration policy and austerity.

Yes I don't disagree with what you are saying

Hold on, who's "they"?

I am one of the people being potentially restricted from bringing my husband to the UK (we have no plans to return actually as his job here is great right how but potentially).

Now, I AM English, born and raised, and if I decide to return to the UK with my children they'll get their education regardless of whether my husband comes or not.

I'm not "imported" - I have every much a right to live in the UK as you.

The only difference this law makes is if I decided to return to teaching secondary school science, I won't earn enough to bring my husband - who is a skilled worker but slightly below that threshold too

That's a British born and raised teacher, her British children AND her skilled husband (who wouldn't be allowed to claim UC etc anyway) all suddenly bared from the country

POC" is not synonymous with migrant.
Giving up "doo-rags" is not a marker of success or integration.
"Same cannot be said about the taxi company" - I mean I think we all know what you're insinuating, so just come out and say it. And use a different taxi company if they're so shit.
This kind of subtle racism is so pervasive in SE Cornwall, and it's why my DH and sons (who are visibly "outsiders") don't visit my parents very often.

I stand by that (by interaction i mean a bit more than someone sitting 5 rows up on the local bus)
Any so called foreigners i or anyone else i know has meet, are long standing UK citizens, not from SE Asia or Zimbabwe, student areas are just that, always have had a % of overseas, the local hospital has more migrant workers but then again, how many actually spend time getting to know them? for most they wont and what % of the pop. are in hospital at anyone time and are you going to ask what their visa status is?

I ve no idea what POC is, let along Doo-rags.

This kind of subtle racism is so pervasive in SE Cornwall, and it's why my DH and sons (who are visibly "outsiders") don't visit my parents very often.

Same with Brexit, Cornwall, despite having little EU migration but having benefited from EU 1 funding, voted for Brexit, mainly because "we are being flooded with migrants"

How has that worked out then?

I live in an immigrant town where the majority, unlike me, are not white.

There is real poverty here.

I was chatting to a taxi driver who did not meet the 18.5k official income requirement for his wife to be here legally on a spouse visa.

So they put her on the 10 year path, which prohibits her from working legally.

All these foolish rules do is force people into the black economy.

I bet they're all high-fiving each other in the Home Office though.

Very fair

"Anyone earning less than £38k, migrant or not, is being supported by net contributor taxpayers. Basically we are importing vast swathes of people on low wages and then paying for them. It’s just bonkers."

That's the attitude of someone who genuinely thinks a care worker, parent, teacher or agricultural worker makes zero contribution to this country - whatever you do is 'worthless' if it doesn't turn a net profit when set against the cost of your healthcare or your use of public services. What's the phrase? Someone who 'knows the price of everything but the value of nothing'.

This is a great demonstration of a basic lack of humanity in our public discourse over immigration. Imagine saying this to a child to explain why it's morally reasonable to ban their parent from living and working in the UK. :-(

Very fair, to exile your own citizens in the tens of thousands if they want to live with their partners?

Sure, what does your country need lab technicians, teachers, nurses, supermarket staff etc etc for?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-67630258?fbclid=IwAR1dJO4uZZ2mL0eX8n_XlViiid_EGdjBk4XcUsFf1Pld7cFxceDB-rJ05fA

Sure we’ll just let everyone in that wants to be here without the means to support themselves!!! Lol

No recourse to public funds. They already have to support themselves.

This is what you see when someone has no valid arguments against an inhumane policy. If you make an argument that it's cruel, and particularly unfair to women to double the minimum income requirements for British citizens to live with their spouses in the UK, the response from HolidayAddict23 is 'you think we should just have open borders!'

Can't you debate like an adult?

"Anyone earning less than £38k, migrant or not, is being supported by net contributor taxpayers. Basically we are importing vast swathes of people on low wages and then paying for them. It’s just bonkers."

But everyone at some point in their life is earning less than £38k. This doesn't mean that over their life as a whole they will not be a net contributor, so even on its own terms (i.e. disregarding non monetary value of contributions) this policy is flawed if the purpose is to only let in people who will be (or be married to, to be precise), net contributors.

If that was the basis on which you were taking decisions, you should be looking at the expected lifetime earnings of the couple, not the current income of one half of it.

It's just yet more soundbitey nonsense from the Tories pandering to an uneducated and bigoted audience.

"UK has a housing crisis because we don't build enough houses"

No, UK has a housing crisis because we allowed property prices to become unaffordable by giving people too much cheap mortgage debt to play with, many of those people are now waking up to the reality of how much that debt is going to cost them, there are a quarter of a million empty houses in England alone according to the media? and mortgage applications and sales have plummeted recently but all those people no longer applying/buying still live somewhere. The "Not enough houses!" meme is the biggest con going.

"uneducated and bigoted audience"

LOL, obviously they have learned from the Remain mistakes then, where they thought that people they considered uneducated and bigoted (because they disagreed with them) didn`t count.

Yes, that sounds emotive and believable, but the problem is that there are plenty of people here already who need to get off the benefits and do something, many people already working are probably doing part-time shifts at the care home to pay their mortgage by now. The PTB (and the care industry) know this, when people dont have access to the cheap debt anymore they will have to take the jobs that they previously wouldnt take because they were pretending to be a "celebrity" on the plastic, it is great cover for a pretence of "tackling" immigration near an election.