Britons say they are facing “ridiculous” costs of up to £22,000 to bring their foreign spouses to the UK under current visa rules.
The Minimum Income Requirement (MIR) is a financial threshold British citizens must meet to sponsor a family member, like a partner or child, to join them in the UK.
In April 2024, the previous government raised the MIR, which applicants must meet, from £18,600 to £29,000 per year. They otherwise had to prove they had cash savings of £88,500.
This amount was set to increase even further – from £29,000 to around £38,700 per year – but these plans were put on hold after Labour’s general election victory.
In September, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper commissioned a review of the financial requirements for family visas by the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC).
The MAC’s long-awaited review, published on Tuesday, found that the £29,000 threshold is “high compared to other high-income countries, with those placing greater weight on family life relative to economic wellbeing”.
The MAC urged against increasing the MIR to £38,700, but offered Labour the discretion to decide “what changes are appropriate”.
This has left families in limbo, with some fearing they might have to leave the country to be with their partners if the MIR increases.
Jonny Edbrooke, 60, told The i Paper he sold his house to meet the £88,500 savings threshold needed to sponsor a visa for his Vietnamese wife, Hanh.
Mr Edbrooke, a magazine designer who also runs a travel channel on YouTube, met his wife in Vietnam, where he lived for around 30 years before moving to the UK. The pair have been married for nearly 20 years.
He said his family moved to the UK so his two sons, aged 16 and 17, can attend British universities.
Mr Edbrooke said his wife applied for a visa through the “10-year route to settlement”, requiring the family to pay fees totalling over £19,000, including the cost of the initial application, an immigration health surcharge and extensions of the visa.
Ms Edbrooke cannot work due to restrictions stemming from her settlement statusThis marks the second attempt the pair have made to secure a visa after their first was rejected in 2022, which Mr Edbrooke said cost the family £2,500.
“It’s ridiculous that’s how much we have to pay so I could be with my wife of 19 years,” he said. “It’s just a struggle and it’s not fair.
“Why is it costing me that much just to be with my wife?”
Mr Edbrooke said a rise in the financial requirements for spouse visas could force the family to move back to Vietnam.
“I can’t stay in the country I was born in because I can’t afford to,” he added.
“That’s all because I am married to a foreigner.”
‘Visa rules prevent us from working’
Mr Edbrooke said his wife is a child caregiver and psychotherapist, but cannot work in the UK due to her settlement status.
“She is in demand from the NHS. They are short of child caregivers,” he said. “But she still can’t get that job because of the spouse visa and the limitations of it.
“It doesn’t make sense.”
Jason Unsworth, 36, told The i Paper that his wife, Sasithon Hongchompoo-Unsworth, who is from Thailand, worked as a housekeeper, but when her first spouse visa expired, she lost her job as she awaited her second one.
Jason Unsworth and his daughters. His wife Sasithon Hongchompoo-Unsworth is awaiting for a new visaThe deadline for the Home Office’s decision on her new visa is in September, meaning she may be unable to work to help support their two daughters, aged eight and nine, until that time.
“She got the job about a month before her visa expired,” Mr Unsworth said. “She had to stop working and is losing out financially.
“I calculated, since she lost her job last year, she has lost around £16,000 in salary earnings.”
Naeem Ali, 38, said his “life was ripped to shreds” when the previous government raised the MIR, as it meant he could not afford to sponsor a visa for his wife, who is from the Philippines.
“People are being priced out of bringing their spouse here,” he said. “It is entirely discriminatory.”
Mr Ali, who works as an office administrator in Birmingham, told The i Paper he suffers from a range of health conditions, including ulcerative colitis, pulmonary embolism, heart strain and deep vein thrombosis.
Despite that, he said that a rise in the MIR may force him to “put my life in danger” to work two jobs so he can afford to sponsor his wife’s visa.
The Immigration White Paper, released last month, introduced stricter rules on the qualifications people need to get a skilled worker visa, an end to overseas recruitment for social care work and obligatory English language tests for students and workers arriving in the UK.
While the Home Office argued the family visa route “is operationally costly, inefficient and too open to abuse”, it has not clarified how it will be changed.
The MAC’s review warned that increasing the MIR to £38,700 per year could conflict with international law, including Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), which protects the right to family life.
A Home Office spokesperson said it is considering the MAC’s findings and “will respond in due course”.
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Read MoreThe spokesperson added that the “Government has already committed to legislate to clarify the application of Article 8 of the ECHR for applicants, caseworkers and the courts”.
Caroline Coombs, the executive director and co-founder at Reunite Families UK, said: “Couples and families’ voices have been ignored by successive governments for too long.”
She added that research conducted by Reunite Families, which will be presented in Parliament later this month, shows that the MIR has “caused untold damages to those whose only ‘fault’ has been to fall in love with someone born abroad, and more particularly the horrendous impact on the children who are the biggest victims of these rules.
“We appreciate MAC’s reference to the fact that, should the Government decide to maintain an MIR, this should be lowered and reflect minimum wages; however, we firmly believe that there shouldn’t be an MIR given its impact. Any threshold, even at minimum wage, would still separate many groups of people who just want to be a family here in the UK.”
Ms Coombs called on the Home Secretary to “have the political courage to change a system that has been hidden in plain sight, destroying the lives of British and settled residents and their children for over a decade”.
The Home Office has been contacted for further comment.
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