Comment by skissane | Hacker News Reader

Comment by skissane | Hacker News Reader

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If you are a British citizen, and you want to get a spouse visa for your spouse to move to the UK with you, expect to pay over 3000 GBP (over 4000 USD).

Australia is even worse – the standard fee is AUD 7850 (over 5600 USD).

Sure, you can marry anybody you want, but you may not be able to afford the necessary visa so that they can live with you.

The worst thing about the UK – pre-Brexit, any EEA (EU+Norway+Iceland+Liechtenstein) or Swiss national could work in the UK, and get working rights for their spouse too, by applying for a free EEA Family Permit. So citizens of 30 countries could bring their spouses to the UK for free, but UK citizens had to pay over 3000 pounds. There was a workaround, the so-called Surinder Singh route, named after the court decision which established it – a UK citizen could move to an EEA state and accept a job there, and after working there for three months, move back to the UK, and then they were eligible for an EEA Family Permit for their spouse. But it seems heartless to make your own citizens to jump through such loopholes just to have a common life with their spouse, when you'd let citizens of 30 other countries do it for free.

To be fair, the Australian/UK case is mostly just driven by greed. The Singaporean rules were created to prevent maids "breaking up families" by getting into romantic relationships with male citizens.

In the UK case, is it just greed, or is there more to it than that?

In 2011, David Cameron gave a "hard line speech on immigration" [0]; to quote an article from the time describing it:

> The Government is planning to increase significantly the minimum amount that UK nationals must earn before being allowed to bring a dependent foreign spouse to live in Britain.

> In a hard line speech on immigration today David Cameron will also announce plans to lengthen the time that couples have to be together before they can settle in this country.

> The Prime Minister hopes the measures will reduce the 50,000 visas granted to family members of British citizens every year.

Sounds like there is more to their motivations than simply extracting money from prospective immigrants.

[0] https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/politics/david-camer...

Well clearly they're trying to stop immigrant citizens parachuting in less-educated adults from poorer countries through spousal visas, and then have them live on government welfare.

Being able to financially support dependent foreign spouses seems like a very reasonable requirement.

EDIT: The spousal visa requires the sponsor to have an income of £18,600 (about 25,000 US dollars). That's not at all a high income.

That's not how the system really works though. They claim they are trying to stop "less-educated adults" who are going to "live on government welfare" – then they make it hard for an Oxbridge-educated doctor who works for the NHS to get a spouse visa for his university-educated wife – https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/home-office-windrush-sc...

> For instance, when my wife was rejected an extension for her spouse visa in 2017 despite us meeting all the requirements, the rejection letter stated that we should leave the UK and continue our marriage in India.

> This decision was passed despite the fact that I was born and brought up in this country and have had a British citizenship throughout. I had worked over 10 years in the NHS. However, in the eyes of a Home Office driven by a Tory-generated hostile environment, none of this was of consequence due to the ethnicity of my wife and I.

> The Home Office was happy to banish another doctor from the short-staffed NHS, and indeed the refusal letter stated that I should leave this country with my wife. My wife, meanwhile, is highly educated, with four degrees and a history of working as a language consultant at SOAS University.

Shouldn’t they have a maximum income/net worth limit too for sponsors?

What percentage of wealthy Brits sponsor spouses that never seek work (and therefore unlikely to pay tax) but consume gov resources?

Income tax is only one form of tax. UK has a consumption taxes like VAT, Stamp Duty Land Tax etc.

Hah, curious, my first thought was, how is a law going to stop 2 people attracted to each other. But on second thoughts, if the maid knows there's no way she can get married/a passport by boinking the husband, she will find him less attractive.

And before the woke brigade shows up, yes in my -- hopefully not antiquated -- mind, status has a lot of influence in attraction, guys (well women too) want attractive mates to feel good about themselves and women find richer men attractive.

Scottish university fees are a similar system. If you are scottish, fees are government paid. The EU forbids treating direct citizens favourably vs other EU citizens, therefore they were required to offer the same to citizens of other EU countries.

Since the EU member was the UK, not Scotland, how they treated _other_ UK citizens was considered an internal matter. So if you were English, Welsh, Northern Irish or non-EU you had to pay, if you were Scottish or other EU nationalities you were paid for.

Don't forget the "financial requirement". You need to prove you earn more than £18,600 (more for each child). That's significantly harder to prove if, for some strange reason, you are not a fulltime employee of BigCorp.

> Sure, you can marry anybody you want,

Seems like they can

> but you may not be able to afford the necessary visa so that they can live with you.

“If the problem can be solved by money, then it’s not a problem”

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