The alienating spouse visa route

The alienating spouse visa route

In this piece, Alex shares his experience of bringing his wife and children with him to the UK through the family visa route, his frustration at the process and how as a British citizen this has harmed his relationship with his own country, the UK.

I recently experienced the Home Office’s approach to spouse visas following my sponsoring of my Italian spouse in order to move back to England together from Belgium with our children (who have dual British and Italian nationality). It is a terrible way to start the process of moving back to one’s own country.

Frankly, anyone who goes through the UK spouse visa process cannot fail to feel an overriding feeling both of disgust and of being deeply insulted. I am a white British citizen and I am aware that this is a much more difficult process for many others. My experience of this country’s treatment of its citizens and their families led to a strong sense of alienation before even setting foot back in the UK.

In practice, this means that in my case, nine months after having moved back, I am still reluctant to give up my time for good causes or give additional support to public services, such is the degree of alienation that I feel. I am certain it will take years for this feeling to go away and I, as the sponsor, was not even the spouse visa applicant!

The application process disgusted me in many different ways. First, with respect to the high visa costs - here I refer to the combination of multiple costs that are necessary for a successful spouse visa application which only lasts 2.5 years. I don’t think many people know that it can cost £4,560 for one application:

Visa cost £1,538 (application from outside UK) +

NHS surcharge £1,872 +

Compulsory English test £150 +

Lawyer fee £1,000 (necessary to avoid application rejection as Home Office guidance is confusing and unclear)

GRAND TOTAL = £4,560

This is incredible when you know that in other European countries, total spouse visa costs are normally no more than £300 + minimum income requirement. The only exception to this is Denmark, where its spouse visa costs are also high, at approximately £1,200.

Second, the UK sponsor has to provide a minimum income requirement, which cannot be contributed to by the spouse making the application. In practice, tens of thousands of families are discriminated against because one of the spouses is not British – this can be particularly harsh for women as they are more likely to have taken a career break and are less likely to meet the minimum income requirements.

Third, and perhaps most insultingly, was the extreme degree of suspicion inherent in the application with respect to our relationship, despite our two British children. Effectively, we had to disprove this suspicion, way and beyond production of marriage and birth certificates, despite us being together over 10 years. Overall, the amount of proof required was more akin to a legal defence case than a spouse visa application.

I feel disgust that this country clearly has no consideration for how difficult it makes it for families to come back to their own country. A 2015 paper published by the Children’s Commissioner showed that up to 15,000 British children are growing up in ‘Skype’ families because the immigration rules introduced in July 2012 make it deliberately very hard for both of their parents to live together in the UK.

Moreover, and equally worryingly for me, this approach to spouse visas and visas more generally shows that the UK does not appreciate the invaluable and extensive experience that is gained from living abroad. Instead, from my experience, it seems to simply see families as a shameless opportunity to fleece them of significant sums of money. This is a huge loss-loss for both our families and our country and its culture.

Then, once in the UK, getting the visa is not by any means the end of the process, as people are continuously asked to prove their status through checks such as the “right to work” or “right to rent” checks.

Indeed, my wife had to go through these herself. One does not need to be an expert to instinctively know that forcing landlords and letting agents to check prospective tenants’ visas, under pain of heavy fines and a criminal record, is a practice that is both highly discriminatory in practice and only belongs in a police state. Furthermore, how is it even possible that landlords and agents are also able to doublecheck a civilian’s immigration status via a UK government website? This is and should remain solely the domain of immigration officers. Indeed, in the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, “right to rent” checks would be illegal under a combination of Human Rights Law, Fair Housing and Anti-discrimination legislation.

I’m a landlord myself, and I would deeply resent having to do such checks due to their highly undemocratic and intrusive nature. For both my wife and the agent involved in her “right to rent” check, it was a very uncomfortable and awkward experience.

Looking forward, it is crucial that the UK government and Home Office urgently face up to the horrors of its recent immigration policies and visa schemes as its reputation at both home and abroad has been, and continues to be, severely damaged.

As a British citizen who is proud of our democratic and liberal heritage it also pains me enormously to see how in the last decade the UK has embraced highly discriminatory and undemocratic policies such as the ‘hostile environment’, at great human and democratic cost. This single policy, leading to disasters such as the Windrush scandal, has been extremely damaging to the UK both in terms of social cohesion and its previously positive reputation abroad.

My foreign friends say to me, ‘Why on earth would I go the UK? It clearly does not want to welcome foreigners’, whilst my British friends abroad also say, ‘I am ashamed to be British. Unless I really have to, why would I go back?’

Photo credit: courtesy of Alex