So said David Cameron in August 2011, laying out his vision for domestic policy. Sadly a new All Party Parliamentary Group on Migration report, published this week, shows that our family migration rules are pulling British families apart rather than bringing them together.
The new rules, introduced last summer, included – among other things – an £18,600 income threshold test. The thinking was that spouses of anyone with annual earnings below this figure would burden the public purse. But the move has created a series of problems; causing huge suffering.
The threshold is a bad indicator of whether spouses will be a drain on public resources. The report notes “perverse outcomes” where families have been prevented from living together in the UK even when “their income and/or net worth suggests that they would have been far from the need to rely on the state”.
The test’s human cost makes for horrible reading. Especially shocking are accounts of British children growing up without one of their parents because of the new rules. The Coram Children’s Legal Centre reports a case of a mother who has had to stop breastfeeding her five-month-old baby because – although her husband and two children are all British – she is a non-EU citizen and her family didn’t meet the income requirements.
As the report notes, UK Border Agency Chief Inspector John Vine has previously acknowledged that the best interests of the child are seldom even considered by decision-makers in such cases. This is no clampdown on adult migrants straining our services – the rights of British children are being ignored.
British citizens – including high earners and talented NHS doctors – also report being unable to bring elderly relatives to the UK to care for them. Others identify a Catch 22: if you’re deemed unable to afford a dependent’s care, they aren’t allowed in – but if you can afford it, you’re considered able to fund care in their home country and they’re still not allowed in.
The rules are separating British citizens from their partners and British children from their parents. They are keeping families apart via poorly-designed tests and preventing people from caring for elderly dependents even where they can afford to do so. With the rights of the most vulnerable on the line, it’s time for an urgent rethink.
