Migration crackdown on Brits' foreign spouses 'risks legal defeat'
December 6, 2023Migration crackdown which would stop Brits earning less than £38,000 from bringing foreign husbands and wives to UK ‘could be blocked by human rights laws’ as experts warn it could lead to a wave of cancelled weddings
Rishi Sunak over-ruled advice from the Home Office to bring in tough new restrictions on Brits bringing their foreign husbands and wives into the UK after being told it would be overturned in the courts, it was claimed today.
Under plans unveiled on Monday, British residents will have to earn £38,700 a year before they are allowed to bring spouses and partners to live with them here, more than double the current threshold of £18,600.
The change, due to come into effect in the spring, has faced criticism including Tory MPs, who accused the PM of ‘putting a price on love’.
The Home Office warned that the current threshold had only just cleared the Supreme Court when it was brought in in 2012 and that the new level was likely to be thrown out under Human Rights Act provisions about family reunions, the Times reported.
In addition, the Government has been warned by the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) that it risks damaging the UK wedding industry by forcing the cancellation of nuptials next summer.
Madeleine Sumption, director of the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford, who sits on the MAC, said: ‘Assuming it comes into effect in the spring, it will affect people planning weddings now as well as people who have been married for many years but are abroad and want to come back to the UK.’
Last night senior Tory backbencher Alicia Kearns, chairwoman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, questioned the change, saying the ‘party of the family’ should not be ‘banning families’.
Madeleine Sumption, director of the Migration Observatory at the University of Oxford, who sits on the MAC, said: ‘Assuming it comes into effect in the spring, it will affect people planning weddings now as well as people who have been married for many years but are abroad and want to come back to the UK.’
Net migration hit a record 745,000 in 2022, although it is estimated to have fallen to 672,000 in the year to June 2023
Tory ex-minister Gavin Barwell joined a backlash against the move, branding it ‘morally wrong… to say only the wealthiest can fall in love, marry someone and bring them to the UK
Under a new five-point plan to slash net migration, the Prime Minister is raising the minimum income for family visas to £38,700 – more than double the current threshold of £18,600 – from next Spring.
It has prompted claims that poorer Britons will no longer be able to live together with their foreign spouses in the UK.
Tory former minister Gavin Barwell joined a growing backlash against the move.
He branded it ‘morally wrong and unConservative to say that only the wealthiest can fall in love, marry someone and then bring them to the UK’.
But No10 defended the measure and insisted Britons earning less than £38,700 may still live with foreign spouses in the UK in ‘exceptional circumstances’.
The Home Office said that savings could also count towards the threshold level.
It has been claimed that hiking the minimum income level for family visas to £38,700 would mean three-quarters of Britons are too poor to marry a foreigner, if they wished to live together in the UK.
Median gross annual earnings for full-time employees in the UK was £34,963 in April 2023, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
It was also pointed out how senior Government figures – including Mr Sunak himself, Chancellor Jeremy Hunt and Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick – all married foreign spouses.
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