Spouse visa income requirement

[Shardonneigghhh]

Can we talk about how the increased income requirement for spouse visas if affecting British citizens with a partner of a different nationality?

The policies it seem we're introduced to reduce the number of migrants, by preventing workers who come to the UK from bringing their family members with them.
This also affects British citizens who with to bring a spouse of family member to the uk to live with them.

https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9920/#:~:text=The%20spouse%2Fpartner%20visa%20minimum,report%20by%2014%20May%202024.

If someone falls in love with a non British person, and they want to live together in the uk, it is expected that the British person earns enough money to support their spouse without claiming any public funds. You have to evidence this when applying for a spouse visa, along with proving that your relationship is genuine. This minimum income requirement was £18,600, but was increased on April 11th to £29,000, with a further increase expected in 2025, to £38,000 per year.

This means that the British spouse will have to earn £38,000 in order to live together with their spouse in the uk. This income is out of reach for so many people. Basically if you are on a low income, you have no hope of your partner living with you in the uk. Women are often disproportionately affected by this as we learn less money overall, and if there are children to care for this may impact how much they can earn, bearing in mind if the husband is overseas he cannot look after the children while she works.

There is also a visa fee of £1846 and minimum nhs surcharge of £1035 per year (this is paid upfront to cover 3 or 5 years at point of application).

Please consider signing this petition.
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/652602

The threshold is for combined income so if the spouse has a job lined up, this shouldn't be an issue. Seems quite reasonable to me and probably prevents a lot of predatory "holiday" marriages.

The threshold isn't for combined income, its for the sponsor. You have to work there for a year and provide bank statements and proof of salary.

That's not what the gov.uk says.

"If you apply for a family visa as a partner, you and your partner usually need to prove that your combined income is at least £29,000 a year.
This is called a ‘minimum income requirement’.
The financial requirements are different if either:

• your partner is getting certain disability or carer’s benefits
• you first applied as a partner before 11 April 2024 and you’re extending that visa - this includes if you first applied as a fiancé, fiancée or proposed civil partner

How you prove your income depends on how you got it. You may be able to use your savings instead of income to show you meet the requirement."

@Catza that is for if you are renewing a visa and both spouses already reside in the uk.
For a first visa it is the sponsors income.

For the savings route, the threshold is very high. Again not an option for most lower income families.

It doesn’t seem unreasonable. £18,900 was ridiculously low and how many people can run a household comfortably in all but the lowest cost parts of the U.K. on even £29,000 nowadays? We’re told teachers and nurses are using food banks, and they earn more than that.

Im not unsympathetic to foreign spouses, I have one - but mine wouldn’t have moved to the UK without having a job lined up himself because it wouldn’t have been feasible financially or socially.

And I’m not sure I’m understanding the argument about it impacting women more greatly. If a woman is already struggling to support herself and her children on a low income, surely the last thing she needs is her foreign partner moving over so she has to support him as well.

What is you think should happen, OP? That the minimum requirement be reset to £18,600 (impossible to support a family on)? Or £29,000 (still going to be a struggle these days)?

@ComtesseDeSpair it's not about having a job lined up. The foreign spouse's income is not included in the visa application, no matter how much they earn or will potentially earn.

Families living overseas together are affected by this if they want to return to the uk.

Families who are unable to live in the foreign spouse's country (economic instability, intolerance of same sex couples, intolerance of mixed race couples for example) are having to live separately for a year or more whilst one spouse comes to the uk and works. At the moment many families can't manage this at £29k, £34k is much too high.

It is very expensive, my husband is born British but I am not. We had to go through so many expenses and scrutiny. We had to first pay for a spouse visa, then an Indefinite Leave to Remain, then Citizenship, each has a cost in the thousands. I had to take tests to prove I could speak English, despite working in a professional role in the UK for years, I had to take a life in the UK test. Now you have to pay for the NHS too, and the income has increased. I have no right to bring my mum who is ill even if proving we don't use public funds (the approval of visas is so low compared to the European countries). It's worth mentioning that if my husband would have been a EU national settled int he UK instead of a born British, we would not have had to pay all that (I believe a visa was needed for spouses of EU nationals, but a few years back it was around £100) and still would have been able to eventually apply for citizenship....

@Butchyrestingface once the partner arrives in the uk, both partners can work to support their family. I think the £18,600 threshold was OK for a single income. Universal credit rate for a single person over 25 is £393.45 per month so the government sees this as enough for one person to live off.

£38,000 is much too high.

Sadly people think it's right to have the increase income requirements, and it does have a huge impact on women sponsors unless they are lucky enough to have a good job or can work two or more jobs to meet the new requirements.

My partner and I got our application in just before the increase, and if for any reason it gets declined, then we are screwed.
I earn 22k a year, have an autistic daughter, and no chance of earning 29k, however if my partner was here, we would be able to earn that minimum easily. I can't move to his country due to my circumstances, even though his country is far better.

Like a previous poster, many don't realise it's just the sponsors income that counts for the initial spouse visa, and think that both parties can combine income to meet the requirements. You can't even apply for the spouse visa with the applicant having a job lined up, because that income still wouldn't count, nor is their income in their home country counted. It is literally just the sponsors income.

If the government wanted to increase the MIR, then at least keep the initial spouse visa MIR at 18.6k, then for renewals have the 29k income requirement as both parties can work to meet that.

At the end of the day, it's all to do with reducing the number of visa issued, despite spouse visas only being a tiny number of visas overall.

18k was far far far too low. It should be a minimum of minimum wage full time times two. So around 35k.

It’s pretty similar in most EU countries, many of them have more stringent controls because they don’t have free at point of service health system, and you have to have health insurance.

Eu spouses are now under the general spouse visa route so have to meet the criteria, they need to meet the MIR, pay nearly 5k in visa and NHS fees for 2.5 years.

If I was to join my partner in his EU country, it'd cost us around €230, nowhere near the almost £5k for him to join me here.

But that's assuming the partner can get a job once in the UK? So the figure they're talking about increasing it to at the moment is surely to cover the possibility that the partner may not be able to, immediately or otherwise, find work?

My parents moved abroad when I was a child, on the promise of a job for my father that never materialised. My mother then spent the next few years working her ass off supporting the family whilst my father slouched around at home, not eligible for any benefits, and their savings slowly depleted to almost . Cycle finally ended when my mother and I returned to the UK in my early teens, and had to register as homeless. I wish there had been a system in place to prevent them emigrating without signed and sealed job contracts.

I can see the logic of the government having up a system to cover all eventualities, and in this case, I agree that £18,600 would not be enough to support two people, far less a family, without recourse to additional benefits. £38,000 does not sound entirely unreasonable when you factors like the cost of living into account.

@ComtesseDeSpair

"Im not unsympathetic to foreign spouses, I have one - but mine wouldn’t have moved to the UK without having a job lined up himself because it wouldn’t have been feasible financially or socially."

The new rules (quite apart from Brexit ending the free movement for people from the 27 EU countries) would mean that unless you earned £29k, he could not move to the UK regardless of any job that he might have been able to line up.

"And I’m not sure I’m understanding the argument about it impacting women more greatly. If a woman is already struggling to support herself and her children on a low income, surely the last thing she needs is her foreign partner moving over so she has to support him as well."

You have entirely missed the point about the impact on British women living abroad with a non-UK spouse. A British woman married to a foreign citizen cannot easily move back to the UK with her family because a) she has to show that she is earning £29k, the point being that women's wages are generally lower than men's; and b) show that she has been doing so for the last 6 months (so will presumably have been living alone in the UK for at least 6 months).

Of course the same problems arise for some British men. I live in Europe and I'm friends with a British-American couple here. The wife is American and is the brains of the outfit, earning far more than her British husband. They looked at moving to the UK, but of course a) he doesn't currently have a job in the UK so cannot show 6 months worth of UK payslips; b) his skills - and the fact that he's been out of the UK job market for many years - make it unlikely that he'll meet the £29k threshold (and £38.7k from 2025 would be impossible). She could probably earn close to £100k, but her income is not taken into account.

Guess a lot of nurses and teachers better not fall in love with a non uk citizen then. Because they won’t earn enough. Either the threshold is too high or those wages are too low. 🤷🏻‍♀️. Dd is planning to move to Canada as they’ll be pleased to have her there as an architect but she won’t earn enough for her Canadian boyfriend to come here.

Must have changed after Brexit. But I always thought the previous way was unfair to Brits, of course it's not a race to the bottom....

totally agree. I have 2 friends with decent jobs. They had to leave the UK to live with their spouse as they didn't meet the income threshold. They are both doing well now in the country they moved to but it is sad that people are forced to leave their home country for that reason. both have spouses who have university degrees and good jobs in their home country. They would have been an asset to the UK, not a drain on resources.

The new rules (quite apart from Brexit ending the free movement for people from the 27 EU countries) would mean that unless you earned £29k, he could not move to the UK regardless of any job that he might have been able to line up.

Well yes, that’s the point: DH didn’t need to count on my income to support his visa because he had a job lined up and came on that visa. I wouldn’t have thought it at all unreasonable, if he hadn’t had a job in the U.K., that the government expected me to earn enough to be able to support him - and I’m not convinced that £29,000 would have been in any way enough for two people to live on in London.

Yes, I’m sure the ideal is that the spouse, once admitted to U.K. as a spouse, finds a job and becomes self supporting quick sharp. But we all know it doesn’t always work that way and I’m not sure how anyone can argue both that e.g. people on minimum wage aren’t paid enough to live comfortably and that job hunting in the UK is currently dire because nobody is hiring and there’s massive competition (multiple threads currently running on both topics) whilst simultaneously arguing that somebody with a minimum wage job can comfortably afford to support a foreign spouse who wants to join them in the U.K. and even if they couldn’t it doesn’t matter because the spouse will easily find a job.

"It’s pretty similar in most EU countries"

Except it isn't. Where I live in the EU, if a UK citizen is married and is able to obtain a job (certain criteria have to be met in order to get the job in the first place) the spouse can join him/her with no restrictions in place. This is regardless of whether the spouse is a UK citizen or a non-EU citizen (EU citizens obviously have free movement rights anyway). Healthcare for the spouse is included in the employee's automatic healthcare coverage for the payment of a small additional fee.

Well yes, that’s the point: DH didn’t need to count on my income to support his visa because he had a job lined up and came on that visa. I wouldn’t have thought it at all unreasonable, if he hadn’t had a job in the U.K., that the government expected me to earn enough to be able to support him - and I’m not convinced that £29,000 would have been in any way enough for two people to live on in London.

You've still missed the point on two counts.

Firstly, your spouse clearly has a job or qualification that would entitle him to apply for a visa regardless of your financial situation. This would not be the case for the vast majority of foreign spouses, who would be reliant on their British spouse's earnings in order to be granted entry to the UK, regardless of whether they themselves could command a wage of £12 an hour or £12,000 a month.

Secondly, imagine a British woman who is living abroad with her foreign husband and family wishes to move back to the UK. Maybe she wants the children to experience life in the UK. Maybe she has elderly parents who she wants to be closer to. But whatever. She has been a SAHM for 5 years and the husband earns more than enough to support the family, and would also do so if they moved to the UK (but his job is not one that would qualify for a visa). Under these rules this family would not be able to move to the UK unless and until a) she gets a job and b) it pays more than £29k. The option to continue as a SAHM does not exist - nor could she have any more children in the UK if this impacted on her ability to work.

Another issue with it is it encourages people to not live in areas with lower costs and wages, continuing pushing people to live in higher cost areas that need these sorts of incomes, making the issues there worse.

I live quite merrily on less than that, always have, I live in a lower cost area comparatively for the UK. I immigrated before these requirements were in place so thankfully never had to worry about it, and I think the government is just doing this for show.

Since 2010, there have been over 200 changes to immigration laws, and that doesn't including rising fees or 'private partners' being brought in with their own fees for things like Biometric Residency Permits. We're still have a very high level of immigration that are only rising. These games of so called 'reasonable' changes do nothing but make them pretend to be hard on immigrants while making money off of them. Previous Chancellor said the UK immigration system is 'for profit', so they're putting on a big show, but they're not going to throttle the golden goose. If we actually wanted to get a handle on immigration, there are many other levers that could be used.

The government likes messing with the immigration system in a way that fucks over women while pretending it's to protect us. The Biometric Residency Permits are a major issue that many declared reasonable, ignoring how many women lost the right to work or access services from being unable to show decades of residency, particularly if those women had been family carers so didn't have P60s or similar paperwork in their name.

Seems quite reasonable to me and probably prevents a lot of predatory "holiday" marriages.

Non-resident citizens already cannot marry in the UK unless on a visa that specifically allows that and the UK has required for decades that people arriving on marriage visas must apply in their country of origin including proving the validity of their relationship. Those already prevent a significant amount of that issue.

The UK government tried for a while to argue that raising the marriage visa age to 21 was a protective measure, but data showed it did nothing of the sort and was eventually overturned. The actual raising of required age here with no exceptions (barring Scotland) and putting more protections here around forced and predatory marriages does far more than to prevent predatory marriages than trying to do so through the immigration system.