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.

And we have to recruit more and more because of the booming growth in population.

How many are leaving? This many?

"1. Main points. The provisional estimate of total long-term immigration for year ending (YE) June 2023 was 1.2 million, while emigration was 508,000, meaning that net migration was 672,000; most people arriving to the UK in the YE June 2023 were non-EU nationals (968,000), followed by EU (129,000) and British (84,000).23 Nov 2023

Long-term international migration, provisional: year ending ...

Office for National Statistics
www.ons.gov.uk › yearendingjune2023"

One year only.

Just last week, I was told on one of these threads that by having high earning jobs, Dh and I were depriving British people of jobs and encouraging "reverse colonialism". Immigrants can't win these days.

We already contributed a massive surcharge to the NHS, btw.

Yes if there is a disability they would be entitled, and if they have children, child benefit.

Anyone coming on a visa pays an NHS surcharge, it’s pretty expensive. To get a visa and pay the NHS surcharge for all you’re talking 20k plus, probably much more. It’s very expensive getting a visa to the U.K., which most people don’t realise, as they are all fed info from the press which doesn’t reflect the reality

But for spousal visas there's already additional contribution to the NHS - £1K extra per year, if I remember correctly, in addition to all usual taxes. Also, no benefits for the spouse until they naturalised (10 years now, if they don't work and contribute?). And ridiculous visa processing fees every 2.5 years, also in thousands.

I mean, it is already ridiculously restrictive, isn't it?

Ultimately I don't think importing cheap labour from abroad is a good way to prop up our health and social care sector. We can kick and scream all we like but we are going to have to fund them properly.

Schools, healthcare, roads, emergency services to name a few. Anyone earning less than £38k with children takes out more than £5k per child from the system to begin with. Then there is everything else.

Migrants may pay an NHS surcharge for some years. That surcharge does not even touch the sides if they or their children need healthcare. They will take out of the system many times over. Way more than they contribute. People are often defended by this but it’s just pure math. People form appreciate that importing people to pay for them to live here mean average standard of living for everyone else drops.

It’s not. When I immigrated, I think the threshold was like £21k for spousal income. Dh just managed to meet it. We were recent uni graduates in our 20s in new graduate jobs, which is surely the situation for most people just settling down and marrying.

Neither of us have ever been on any sort of benefits, other than SMP and child benefit for me. We have both always worked. Always paid for housing privately. In fact, I was ineligible for any sort of benefits anyway due to my immigration status (as is the case for most immigrants without indefinite leave to remain/citizenship or who aren’t asylum seekers). In fact, just my presence made Dh ineligible for benefits too, not that we ever needed them.

We collectively earn over £100k now as a household, but in our 20s, no it wouldn’t have been possible. It would have meant Dh would have had to move to my home country instead and the UK would have lost the benefit of all the (now) higher rate taxes we pay and the contributions we both make to life here.

The magic immigrants that will always stay young and healthy....

Forgot about those. Of course you are right.

I think it's absolutely fair. Anecdotally, I've heard that anyone with children that isn't a higher or top rate tax payer is a net beneficiary of the state, when NHS, education, children's allowance etc are all taken into account. So if an immigrant on £25k a year gets a visa for his non working spouse and 3 kids, the family will ultimately cost the country money.

The more pressing issue is, perhaps, who is going to do all of these low paying jobs now that we've booted out the Europeans.

It's all a bit too little too late from the Conservatives though. Talk about clutching at straws. ~Not all~ voters are completely stupid.

Don't forget healthcare workers have families too, even if they come on a separate scheme they can't bring family

1k extra per year (for the nhs) isn't much, neither are the extra taxes if the visa holder is poorly paid and their dependents don't work (a statistic quoted on the radio this evening was that only 1 in 4 dependents are in work).

I mean I doubt 1k per year would actually pay for much nhs care when needed tbh. One child birth would wipe out years or a bad a&e visit.

Anyway with lack of trained medical professionals what should be done is the courses should be fully funded on the condition of working it off by working for the nhs for a minimum of X years otherwise you pay it back. Better working hours and improved pay.

Importing workers just kills that’s countries workforce and doesn’t encourage training of homegrown workers.

and at the same time, they are planning to introduce legislation allowing immigrant workers to be paid 20% less than British nationals? and not to mention we need carers and other workers who are paid very little anyway. I mean we could just pay everyone a decent wage (and therefore encourage british people to join these sectors in higher numbers) but none of our overlords are interested in doing that of course.

Well, disability benefits are quite a niche case, and it is not like child benefit offsets the taxes they pay.
So, say, our family of a teacher and a nurse on £76K joint income, house with mortgage, two kids and a labrador. Are they sponging off the taxpayer?

The more pressing issue is, perhaps, who is going to do all of these low paying jobs now that we've booted out the Europeans.

Have we?

What about the 6 million who have applied and received EUSS and the many more who have joined then on a joiner status?

Are other European countries having to import migrants in the same way as the UK?

When people grumble about immigration, my impression was that "Nice ladies from Ghana, Poland and the Philippines who are looking after my Gran" never even entered their head.
But it's not like I've done research or anything so feel free to broaden my perspective here, fellow posters.

It's not easy NOW to get care workers, and it's not something you want unwilling or unsuited people to be doing, because BY DEFINITION their clients are extremely vulnerable!

So policy in this area has implications. If you say, Okay, we don't want to have care workers come from overseas. Granny isn't miraculously going to leap from her bed like Jesus just laid hands on her. She's still going to need looking after.

So how does that happen? At first, there will be resistance to raising wages. Granny's carers don't turn up because of staff shortages / her family have to take unpaid leave to step in, which affects their family, career, and workplace / she gets substandard carers who neglect, abuse or steal from her.
Say then that wages go up to attract people into the sector. Councils' costs go up. Their ability to raise money is capped, so either they cut back on education and child social care to fund it and/or the central grant from government has to be raised which means we all pay more in tax or see further cuts in other areas (NHS, benefits, pensions...).

As a country we do get to make choices, but whether we admit it or not, those choices come with consequences.

I am paying less than £1K for private medical insurance for three people per year, to a company that makes profits out of it.

Completely agree with cancelling them in event of divorce in the future. A very close friend married a man from Egypt who left her literally the day he got his British Passport after pretending everything was fine and they were happy. He never worked a day while living off her but was suddenly able to work enough hours to meet the threshold of 18,600 to bring his new Egyptian wife over (who it turned out had actually encouraged him to marry my friend in the first place to use her). Sadly we saw many similar cases

my dd remains in immigration limbo. coming up on 10 years, at least 3 lawyers and still not granted the indefinite leave. the last visa recently expired, one lawyer said to leave the country one said to stay.
lots of nuance in the policy i gather.

No, they're not.

The median household income in 2022 was £35,000 before taxes and benefits were netted off.

From the ONS:

In FYE 2022, 53.8% of all UK individuals were net recipients (living in households receiving more in benefits than they paid in taxes), a reduction of 1.2 percentage points since FYE 2021. A much greater proportion of retired individualswere net recipients (89.2 %) in comparison with non-retired people (46.0%), largely because of the classification of State Pension and Pension Credit as cash benefits.

So most households made up of non-retired people are net contributors in calculations of cash and in-kind benefits, as carried out by the ONS, not net recipients, regardless of how many people in that household are working.

The decision is clear, no one should have children then. That's it, problem solved.

Like those “enter country” young men who suddenly really really love and fancy the pants off 67 year Irene. Get married move in and fuck off.

Does your insurance cover A&E and emergency surgery? If you have a heart attack, where will you go?