The UK, where falling in love with a foreigner is only for the better off
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Version 0 of 1. The Tories have been saying this sort of thing for years. “Families are the most important institution in our society. We have to do everything in our power to strengthen them.” And again: “My ambition is to make Britain more family friendly.” Those were both from David Cameron. But they could have been from any Conservative party leader since … well, ever. Sucking up to the Republican party on her trip to hold hands with Donald Trump (that well-known proponent of family values), Theresa May flagged up what they held in common: “Nationhood, family, economic prudence, patriotism.” The value of the family is supposed to be in the ideological DNA of social conservatives. But only, it seems, if you have a few quid. On Wednesday, the supreme court upheld the legality of a government policy that breaks up families in situations where the UK spouse earns less than £18,600 and is married to a foreigner from outside the EU. The government regards such poorer families as a “burden to the state” and so forces its own citizens who fall in love with non-EU citizens to shove off and set up their family life elsewhere. And I write poorer, not poor, because according to research conducted by Oxford University, nearly 40% of the working UK population wouldn’t be eligible to live here with their non-EU partner – that breaks down to 27% of men and 55% of women. The majority of young people don’t earn enough either. And the statistics are worse if you have a child. So, if you’re a young women and you fall for a handsome stranger from a distant land, it is highly unlikely the Home Office will allow you to remain in this country if you want to live together. Your children can get to know their UK grandparents via Skype. When it comes to the right to a family life, Mrs May is pricing out tens of thousands of UK citizens. This directly affects a number of my parishioners, many of whom are on the minimum wage – around £13,000 a year for a full-time job. For example, “A” doesn’t come to church on Sundays any more. Working at the hairdresser wasn’t pulling in enough for her non-EU husband to be allowed to stay with her. So she got a second job. And now she doesn’t see much of either her husband or her son. I saw her on the bus the other day, but she didn’t see me. She was asleep, exhausted after working all hours. That was the day the delightful Kim Kardashian posted an “inspirational” quote on Snapchat: “You can’t have a million-dollar dream with a minimum-wage work ethic.” What on earth would she know about a minimum-wage work ethic? Article 8 of the European convention on human rights is intended to guarantee our right to a family life. Yet according to the supreme court decision, it appears that this guarantee only applies to those of us lucky enough to be on a decent earner. Some argue that there is no breach to the right to a family life when the couple can go and establish domestic bliss elsewhere, in the country where the foreign partner comes from. Well, good luck with that one if you fall for someone from Syria. They don’t say it, of course, but it’s hard to avoid the suspicion that when the government thinks of mixed-nationality couples, they think first about scam marriages set up for money or lonely men being conned into acquiring their mail-order bride from Belarus over the internet. They don’t think of, for example, the Queen and Prince Philip. My wife is from outside the EU, and when we went to the register office to set a date for our marriage, we were interrogated as if we might be smuggling heroin through passport control. The whole apparatus of the state is set up to be overly suspicious of those of us who fall in love with foreigners. The UK is now the least-welcoming country to mixed-nationality couples in the western world. Only Norway requires a higher income threshold. But given that wages are so much higher in Norway, their threshold works out to be relatively modest. We now top the league table in terms of this anti-family policy. So much for the Tories being “family friendly”. |