LS Legal News Bulletin
The Minimum Income Rule for Spouse Visas
Friday 22nd February 2019
For many people the decision to start a family is not an easy one. For families in the UK where one of the partners is from outside the EU it is not only hard to make such a difficult and important decision but if coming to the UK, they will need a visa to get in.
For tens of thousands of families in the UK where one of the partners is from outside the EU, the UK's spouse visa rules mean that they cannot simply be together. For those families, love — supposedly priceless — has a price tag.
Any British citizen who falls in love with a "foreigner" has to earn a minimum income of £18,600 a year before even considering building a life together in the UK. If you don't earn that amount every year, tough. You don't get to be together — even if you have children. Around 40% of British earn less than £18,600. So, the law is effectively telling nearly half the country that they don't get to fall in love with someone from abroad.
We can also expect the minimum income requirement could extend to include EU nationals in the years following Brexit, affecting a significantly larger number of families in the future.
