Our new letter to the Home Office about MIR changes

As we told you back in January, we were devastated to see that the UK government proposed to raise the minimum income requirement (MIR) to sponsor a non-UK family member to move to the UK from £18,600 a year to £38,700 a year. This is twice the national minimum wage and will make it almost impossible for many of us living overseas with non-British family members to ever return to live in the UK with our non-UK families. Already, only 40% of British citizens with non-British family members can meet the current MIR.

We wrote urgently in December 2023 and received a reply in January 2024, which simply restated the policy without addressing most of our key points.

Now that the secondary legislation to implement these changes is out, we’ve written again to Minister Tom Pursglove (see below).

We have asked him to reply to our specific questions rather than provide stock answers. In particular, we want to know:

• Why British citizens and their families or those settled in the UK should be treated the same as non-British skilled workers.

• How the policy can be justified when it affects our rights as British citizens to return to the UK, and yet there was no prior consultation of the British diaspora and the policy was introduced before we got our votes back.

• Why our partners are treated as dependents and their earning potential is not taken into account by the policy.

• Why exceptions are made for some categories of British citizens e.g. in the armed services and not for e.g. British teachers, doctors, nurses, etc.

• Why the policy does not take into account the different position of self-employed people.

We also noted that it was disingenuous to argue that the policy ensures that family migrants do not unreasonably become a burden on the British taxpayer because this is already a condition of their leave anyway.

Finally, we questioned the Home Secretary’s recent tweets stating that the changes would ensure a fairer system for the British people. We pointed out that the British diaspora is one large section of the British people but this policy doesn’t look at what is fair for them.

We will keep you updated but intend to keep writing until we get satisfactory answers. We now have our votes back and need full information before we decide how to exercise them.