Meeting on immigration rule that’s keeping families apart (From Daily Echo)

To anyone affected - the group BritCits are collecting stories for lobbying purposes. We have reached out to numerous public figures and media with these stories.

You can follow the campaign here - http://www.britcits.
com . Please also consider sending your own story in to britcits at gmail dot com, if you are affected.

- steve (BritCits)

The income threshold was a source of much headache when I had to apply for the spouse visa. Thankfully, my salary was just enough in the end and my application was successful. What I wish that more British citizens realised that is that there are two different rules for them and for EU citizens. People from other EU countries living in the UK are perfectly entitled to bring in their non-EU spouse, without any income requirement or even any application fees. In contrast, UK citizens face extortionate fees and must meet an arbitrary income threshold if they want to bring their non-EU spouse to live in their own country. How is this fair?

Surely this policy is merely common sense. No country that is desirable to non-residents can have open slather on immigration, otherwise what made it desirable in the 1st place would soon evaporate.
Since the EU immigration policies there now has to be even more scrutiny on non-EU persons as the number of non-residents wanting to enter a wealthy benefit generous country like the UK has now doubled or tripled.
This is simply therefore a sensible policy to reduce the risks of economic failure and to maximise the continued desirability of the UK.
I am sure that the vast majority of Brits support sensible immigration restrictions. Equally I suspect that that same vast majority would endorse much more scrutiny on the policies that permit new entrants rapid access to benefits and those policies that encourage segregation into separate communities.
Immigration is not a right, it is a privilege and is not just about enhancing personal outcomes of entrants. It is also about enhancing the host culture, quality of life and economy. It is a 2 way street that often seems to be a forgotten message by self-interested parties

To be clear - this policy affects the family lives of British citizens. British citizens with non-EU partners, and children with those partners. So it is not merely an immigration issue (though that is a big part of it), but an issue which affects the family lives of British people - British taxpayers - who are unable to be reunited with their families in their UK. These people face a choice between permanent exile, or family breakup. Indeed, in some cases (those with partners from countries with other regressive laws - and this applies particularly to lgbt people), their only choice may be family breakup.

The numbers of people affected will be very large. According to this piece of research - http://www.migration
observatory.ox.ac.uk
/press-releases/wome
n-young-people-and-n
on-londoners-are-mos
t-affected-changes-f
amily-migration-poli
c - 47% of the country will now no longer be able to be reunited with their non-EU families. I'd suggest this is a minimum figure based on the language requirement alone. The other restrictions (on elderly dependants; on the language requirement, which is rising from an A1 to B1 level - note that A1 is 'entry' level, B1 is the same level that's accepted to study at HND level and is therefore fairly high; and on 2 to 5 years to Indefinite Leave to Remain, which sets people up for failure as this will greatly increase the difficulty of finding employment - given that very few employers will want to undertake the overhead that the additional, onerous checks will require in order to avoid associated fines) - the numbers affected could be far higher.

These rules break up families, and this is a legacy that will not be forgotten. Neither will it be forgotten by the outside world.

To correct an apparent misconception - those entering the UK as partners our spouses have the words 'NO RECOURSE TO PUBLIC FUNDS' stamped in their passports. They -cannot- claim benefits - it's an impossibility - so the benefits issue should not even come into the government's calculations.

As with the restrictions on overseas students (which are already damaging the British economy, and Britain's reputation overseas), the government is sending out the wrong message. As with the message to business, which in the modern era is international. To quote a recent (excellent) Economist leader, this is 'the Tories' barmiest policy' ( http://www.economist
.com/news/leaders/21
564841-britains-immi
gration-policy-cripp
ling-business-and-ec
onomy-wake-up-mr-cam
eron-tories ) and no good will come of it.

As a country our resources are at breaking point,a tightening of the immigration process would be welcomed by the majority of the hardworking taxpayers , if those that arrive here had no access to our benefits and National Health schemes until they have input a minimum of a number of years earnings into our dwindling pot to substain them, then I think that tolerance levels would go up towards the immigrants, this of course would also deterr quite alot of those that want to come here for the free ride and sponge off of us taxpayers that are now the second class citizens and are a source of ridicule because we actually get up and go to work everyday when we could sit at home watching TV and get paid for it. Im not against immigration by anyone to any country, im against freeloaders and shirkers. If you cannot support yourself dont come here we have enough of own homebred spongers to cope with.