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Foreign spouses could be told to leave UK under plans to cut legal migration
(www.independent.co.uk)
this post was submitted on 06 Dec 2023
41 points (97.7% liked)
UK Politics
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‘…come back when you’re rich’…? Requiring a household income of £38,500 a year would not be ‘rich’ by any measure. In the south east of England, that’s two people scraping by. It’s also not about, despite you being insistent on suggesting, that we shouldn’t want poor people living here. It’s about ensuring that anyone who comes to live in the UK from abroad can be supported by their spouse until they can find employment. It’s about ensuring that public funds are used for the UK and its own citizens. We don’t live under a one world government and we do not have the resources to care for all of humanity. There is a limit. Each nation needs to care for its citizens basic needs and can’t be expected to do more unless there is some sharing of resources. It just doesn’t add up.
Of course we don’t kick citizens out. I don’t know why you’re mentioning this - why would we? Kicking a citizen out of their home and making them stateless contravenes the universal declaration of human rights. This is a completely different topic than requiring an immigrant to be able to support themselves, or be supported by their sponsor.
The UK does care for all of its citizens ‘at a national level’. However, until a person becomes a citizen, they are not a member of that nation state. My wife, for example, has leave to remain in this country on the basis of our marriage but she is not a citizen and she is not entitled to any public funds. She is, in her home country, of which she is a citizen, but she only has the right to reside and work in this country for the duration of her visa. She may apply for indefinite leave to remain and then subsequently, citizenship, but until that point, the UK has no more responsibility towards her than it does to a Japanese person living in Uzbekistan or a North Korean living in the jungles of Central America.
Basically my point is, in my opinion spouses of citizens should be treated effectively as citizens, and married couples be considered together as a family unit.
I think it's a weakness of UK policy that in this situation we consider a married couple more as two independent individuals than as a family unit.
…but it’s not treating them as two individuals. It’s treating them as a family unit and insisting that the person immigrating to the UK can be supported by their spouse.
I see your point and in an ideal world, perhaps you’d be right. With a finite amount of resources, however, it’s simply not realistic.