This week the Conservative government announced plans to increase the minimum salary threshold for a family visa to £38,700 from next spring and increase the Immigration Health Surcharge from £624 to £1035. This is a flagrant attack on the right to family life, and shows how completely out of touch the government is with ordinary families and how much they earn.
Around 60% of workers in the UK earn less than this and only the British partner’s income counts for the first family visa (a foreign spouse cannot use their current salary to apply for the visa). Effectively, the government is saying that 60% of British workers are not worthy to love who they want, and live with them in a stable and loving relationship in the UK. And, as people tend to earn more as their career advances, this new policy favours people closer to retirement over those at the start of their careers.
Out of touch with what ordinary people earn
The government is clearly out of touch with wage levels in this country. The immigration salary threshold is there to determine whether applicants will be able to support themselves financially once they arrive in the UK. If they are saying that a worker earning £38,700 cannot support a family of two, then what are they doing to improve the wages or welfare benefits of millions of households in the UK currently earning less than that?
“My wife was approved for a visa earlier this year, and we definitely earn enough money to sustain ourselves,” says South Glos Green Daniel Johnston, “But under the new rules her visa would have been refused and we would be forced to separate. This is just another cruel attack by this government on the rights of immigrants and their families to distract from their own failures.”
Making things even tougher for health and care workers
The Conservatives also plan to ban health and social care workers from bringing family members with them when they come to work here. Under the new rules, 100,000 social care workers who were granted visas in the last year may not have come here at all. Far from relieving pressure on public services, the Conservatives’ latest crackdown on migrants will drive British services into the ground and everyone in the country will pay the price.
South Glos Greens will always stand up for the rights of migrants and their families, and we value the contribution they make to our public services. We call on this government to stop making policies to feed their culture wars and start working in the public interest; to tackle the cost of living crisis and give struggling families the help they need; invest in our public services, bring down NHS waiting times and fight climate change.
