British father-to-be feels like ‘second class citizen' over family visa rules

David Todd, 33, is calling on the Government to reform the policy, including to scrap or lower the minimum income requirement (MIR) for British citizens to bring their partners to the country, as ministers mull over updating the visa route.
His plea comes as charities Reunite Families UK and Coram published reports on Monday documenting the 'significant emotional and psychological harm' to families from the policy, particularly for children who grow up under long separation from one of their parents.
Mr Todd had hoped to move back to the UK from Germany with his American wife, Claire Todd, 32, before the birth of their first baby which is due in October.
But the couple are facing being split up for Mr Todd to return to the UK alone to build up enough income proof as the British citizen in the relationship, or raise savings of more than £88,500 dictated by the visa rules to allow them to return as a family.
Mr Todd told the PA news agency: 'There's been lots of times where I've stayed awake at night worrying about it and how it's all going to work out, because you feel completely helpless.
'It's like we're second class citizens because we married someone who fell in love with someone who wasn't British.'
Earlier this month the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) set out its recommendations after a review requested by the Home Secretary to look at how to set an MIR for family visas that balances economic wellbeing and family life.
It warned against raising the threshold for family visas to the same level for skilled workers, as planned by the previous government.
Skilled workers are only eligible to come to the UK if they earn a salary of £38,700 or more, compared to £29,000 required mainly for family visas.
The UK's current £29,000 threshold, which was set in 2024, is high compared to other high-income countries reviewed by the MAC.
It was previously set at £18,600 since 2012.
Mr Todd, from Solihull, West Midlands, added increasing the level to £38,700 would be 'devastating'.
'Even with this MAC report now, we don't know what the Government's going to do, how they're going to react,' the classical music conductor said.
'It's this feeling that you're kind of helpless, you're stuck in limbo, and you're desperately trying to contort yourself into this position where you can make it work just because you want to live with your wife or husband.'
The couple, living in Wurzburg, Germany, first left the UK after Ms Todd's student visa ended and moved to the European nation so they could be together seven years ago.
After building 'good careers' as classical musicians on the continent, the couple began trying to make a return to the UK up to a year ago, wanting to be near family as they start their own.
For Mr Todd, he said the Government should at least make the ways to prove income easier, and to include the spouse's salary to contribute to the income threshold.
He said it is 'ridiculous' his wife's income cannot be used to meet the salary requirement despite her remote job as a content creator paying enough to mean they 'could move to the UK tomorrow'.
Mr Todd said he wants to 'avoid at all costs' the prospect of being separated from his wife and child, adding: 'It just feels wrong, am I going to have to turn to my child when she's older and say to her: 'Well, sorry, the reason I wasn't with you for the first year of your life was because I was trying to get work for the family to move.''
British father Ed Moon, currently living in Taipei with his Taiwanese wife Amber Moon and four-year-old daughter Maya, is also applying to the family visa route to move back to the UK as Maya reaches school age.
He told PA the most difficult thing is the 'extremely extensive' documentation you need to provide with any errors meaning the visa is denied and the process must be started again, with visa fees costing around £2,000.
'We're having to dip into every ounce of our savings to do this,' the 36-year-old from High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, said.
'You feel just unwanted by your country essentially. It's been especially tough, really like from a personal perspective.'
The journalist also said it is a waste of money for the taxpayer for him to grow up and be educated in the UK, to then not let him and his family live there, adding: 'I want to be able to contribute to the UK.'
The research by Reunite Families and Coram found that British citizens face exile, increased financial pressure and separation from their partners often for long periods of time from the family visa policy.
For children separated from one of their parents, the charities warned they can face life-changing trauma and distress.
The report also highlighted how the rules particularly discriminate against those including British mothers, who are more likely to experience hardship, working class and low income partners and black and ethnic minority workers, who are more likely to earn less than their white counterparts.
Reunite Families UK executive director Caroline Coombs said 'simple and practical changes' from the Home Office could make significant differences to families, starting with scrapping the MIR and simplifying the rules and application process to stop the need for expensive legal advice.
'These rules have become the tax on love. People are suffering and want to be heard.'
A Home Office spokesperson said: 'We understand the minimum income requirement for family visas needs to balance a respect for family life while also maintaining the UK's economic stability, which is why the Home Secretary commissioned the independent Migration Advisory Committee to undertake a review.
'We are now considering its findings and will respond in due course.'

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New Statesman​

11 minutes ago

• New Statesman​

How Donald Trump plunged America into a blind war

Photo by Daniel Torok/The White House via Getty Images One minute after midnight on 21 June, a small group of US B-2 Spirit bombers took off from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri heading west across the Pacific. They were picked up shortly afterwards by flight tracking accounts on social media, prompting breaking news alerts that multiple American bombers capable of carrying the type of heavy ordinance that would be needed to destroy Iran's nuclear sites were airborne as journalists frantically traced their trajectory. In fact, this was a decoy. The real strike group was flying east across the Atlantic, with seven B-2 bombers joined by US fighter jets as they reached the Middle East, which escorted them into Iranian airspace. In the early hours of 22 June local time, they dropped a total of 14 GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrators (MOPs), 30,000-pound guided bombs known as 'bunker busters', on Iranian nuclear facilities at Fordo and Natanz. A US Navy submarine fired more than two dozen Tomahawk missiles at a third site in Isfahan as part of what the Pentagon called 'Operation Midnight Hammer'. By now, most people will have seen Donald Trump's address to the nation in the hours that followed, flanked by his distinctly uncomfortable-looking vice-president JD Vance along with secretary-of-state-turned-national-security-adviser Marco Rubio and defence secretary Pete Hegseth. Trump, predictably, pronounced the whole operation a 'spectacular military success', declaring that Iran's key nuclear enrichment facilities had been 'completely and totally obliterated', which he could not possibly have known at the time and has yet to be confirmed. 'Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace,' Trump intoned. 'If they do not, future attacks would be far greater and a lot easier.' Appearing to veer from his script towards the end, he added, 'I want to just say, we love you, God.' In the best-case scenario for those who support these strikes, Trump has acted decisively, ordering the use of military force where successive previous presidents had equivocated, and setting back the Iranian nuclear programme for years, perhaps even for good. He has finally neutered a regime that has long been defined by its rallying cry, 'Death to America', and delivered Israel from the existential threat that would have been posed by a nuclear-armed Iran, which one former Iranian president is said to have described as a 'one-bomb country'. According to this rendering, Trump has taken advantage of a moment of profound weakness for Tehran, whose most notorious proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, have been eviscerated by the Israeli military campaign over the last 18 months, and whose most senior military commanders and nuclear scientists have been assassinated. He has forced a reckoning for the Iranian regime – that will be quietly welcomed by many in the region and beyond – abandon your nuclear ambitions, or cease to exist. In the process, he has also proved the TACO theory (Trump Always Chickens Out) wrong. Perhaps some even see him delivering on his election campaign mantra that he would deliver 'peace through strength'. This is all, theoretically, possible. We should be clear, less than 24 hours at the time of writing from the US strikes, that nobody – not Trump, not the Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and not Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei – knows for certain where this will lead, or how this war will end. (Trump has already called it a 'war' on social media.) But the history of recent US military campaigns in the region does not bode well. The exception often noted is the first Gulf War in 1991, where the coalition military effort known as Operation Desert Storm lasted than two months and succeeded in forcing Saddam Hussein to withdraw his troops from Kuwait, although the Iraqi dictator was permitted to remain in power. The problem with the optimistic case this time is, to quote the former US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld on the subsequent invasion of Iraq, the 'known unknowns', and the 'unknown unknowns'. In the short term, the known unknowns include what capabilities Iran retains to retaliate, both in terms of its proxies abroad (including the Houthis in Yemen and militias in Iraq), the remaining stockpiles of missiles and drones in Iran, which Israel has repeatedly targeted in recent days, and its ability to disrupt shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, where almost a third of the world's seaborne oil transits. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Ayatollah Khamenei, who is 86 and said to be in faltering health, is reportedly sheltering in a bunker, according to the New York Times, avoiding electronic devices for fear of revealing his location and communicating only through a trusted aide, where he has listed several clerics who could replace him if he is killed, along with substitutes for the military chain of command. We do not yet know how Khamenei will respond to these attacks and whether he will assess – as many commentators have insisted – that he must now retaliate in some meaningful form if he hopes to restore Iran's deterrence and remain in power. We do not know whether Tehran can be induced to resume negotiations on a nuclear deal with Washington, as many European leaders have now urged. We do know, however, that Iran had previously negotiated a nuclear deal – known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – with the United States, the UK, France, China, Russia, and the EU in 2015, which Trump abandoned during his first term in 2018. It is not clear that any Iranian government would entrust its future to a new deal that could be similarly torn up by the next US administration. (Trump has also launched trade wars against Canada, Mexico and China since returning to power despite signing much-hyped trade deals with them during his previous term.) Meanwhile, the example of the Kim dynasty in North Korea, which has pursued nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them despite the significant costs, and is not currently being bombed by the US, might well suggest to the Iranian regime that the surer course for survival would have been to race for a bomb while it still could, and, if it has the opportunity, to try again. We also know that despite the repeated messaging via US backchannels in the hours after the strike that this was a 'one-and-done' operation – a limited campaign to target the nuclear facilities and nothing more, certainly not the prelude to regime change – Trump and Netanyahu have delivered starkly contradictory signals. Netanyahu openly urged the Iranian people to 'stand up' against the regime after launching the Israeli military campaign on 13 June. Trump has demanded 'UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER' from Iran on social media and threatened to kill Khamenei. 'It's not politically correct to use the term, 'Regime Change,' but if the current Iranian Regime is unable to MAKE IRAN GREAT AGAIN, why wouldn't there be a Regime change???' Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on the evening of 22 June. 'MIGA!!!' Given these statements, it is not hard to see why the Iranian government might conclude that the US and Israel have, in fact, launched a war that aims to overthrow them, and, therefore, that this is not merely a negotiating ploy that could yet end in a new nuclear deal, but an existential fight that justifies any means. Then there are the unknown unknowns. We do not know, for instance, whether there could be other Iranian nuclear facilities that had not yet been identified, and what steps the regime might have taken to ensure the survival of key personnel, equipment and material. We do not know how secure the regime's grip on power is and whether Khamenei could yet be sidelined, or simply replaced, by hardliners from within the Iranian Revolutionary Guard or former high-ranking officials. 'Tehran is now full of such plots,' one anonymous source, who claimed to be part of a plan to replace the ageing supreme leader, told The Atlantic after the strikes. 'Everybody knows Khamenei's days are numbered.' If the regime does fall, it is far from clear what type of government would take its place, and what that would mean for the region, and well beyond. Recent examples – such as Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria – suggest liberal democracy is an unlikely outcome. 'The US is now entangled in a new conflict, with prospects of a ground operation looming on the horizon,' taunted Dmitry Medvedev, the former Russian president and current deputy chair of the country's security council, who is now probably best known for his bellicose social media threats. He then claimed that a 'number of countries are ready to directly supply Iran with their own nuclear warheads.' (It is worth bearing in mind that his main role these days seems to be garnering attention and provocative headlines.) With the Russian military tied down in Ukraine, Vladimir Putin is unlikely to offer much in the way of meaningful help in the short term, but he will certainly capitalise on what appears to be a flagrant breach of international law and what he will present as yet more evidence of American hypocrisy. (Putin, too, claims to have attacked Ukraine in part to stop the country developing nuclear weapons and threatening Russia's national security.) Moscow also stands to benefit from a rise in the price of oil if Iran threatens the Strait of Hormuz or targets other oil-producing facilities in the region. Beijing has strongly condemned the US attack, which the foreign ministry said, 'seriously violate the purposes and principles of the UN Charter and international law'. China is Iran's largest trading partner, which supplied around 15 percent of the oil the country imported last year, and will not welcome the prospect of a massive spike in oil prices if the conflict escalates at a time when the Chinese economy is already slowing. But the prospect of the US getting drawn into another interminable war in the Middle East and deferring, yet again, the mythical 'pivot to Asia', with its focus on deterring a Chinese assault on Taiwan, offers other potential benefits to Beijing. The reverberations of Trump's gamble will be felt far beyond the borders of Iran. Flanked by Vance, Rubio, and Hegseth as he delivered his speech in the hours after the attack, the impression was less a show of unity than a president who is keenly aware of the domestic political risk this involves – and the vehement opposition already emanating from parts of his Maga base – and determined to show that his top lieutenants were all on board. Perhaps that was why Vance in particular, who has built his political brand on his opposition to US military intervention overseas, looked so perturbed. Trump has plunged the US into a war with Iran, with no apparent strategy, and objectives that appear to be evolving, in real time, on social media. Maybe the best-case scenario will yet transpire, and the Middle East will emerge from this conflict more stable and prosperous, but recent history cautions against too much optimism. [See also: The British left will not follow Trump into war] Related

Spectator

19 minutes ago

• Spectator

Is Britain ready to defend itself against Iranian reprisals?

Operation Midnight Hammer, America's air and missile strikes against Iran at the weekend, did not involve the United Kingdom. Although the Prime Minister was informed of the military action in advance, there was not, so far as we know, any request from the United States for British approval, participation or support, and Sir Keir Starmer continues to call for a de-escalation of the conflict. There had been a great deal of suggestion that the UK might be drawn into action against Iran. The most likely scenario was thought to be a request from Washington to use Naval Support Facility Diego Garcia, the maritime and air base America leases from Britain in the Chagos Islands, for the B-2 Spirit stealth bombers which struck the nuclear facility at Fordow. In the end, the aircraft conducted their attack from their usual home at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri – but this is not an irrefutable alibi which will be accepted by the régime in Tehran. We should not imagine that such a 'crisis or conflict' is in the far-distant future Decades of standing shoulder-to-shoulder in the Middle East with the United States means that Britain is seen as America's close and almost inevitable ally in the region. Our participation in the invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003 set the pattern in that regard. For Iran's leadership, however, Britain has a special and outsized villainy: it has not been forgotten that the United Kingdom was the driving force behind what it called Operation Boot and the CIA referred to as TP-AJAX, the overthrow of Iranian prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in August 1953 to protect the interests of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. This means that when Iran now threatens retaliation for the US strikes at the weekend, Britain and British interests are effectively on the front line. The Defence Secretary, John Healey, announced on social media on Sunday that: The safety of UK personnel and bases is my top priority. Force protection is at its highest level, and we deployed additional jets this week. There is no shortage of British targets in the Middle East for Iran to strike at. The UK naval support facility in Bahrain is the base for Operation Kipion, the long-standing air and maritime security mission in the Gulf and the Indian Ocean, the UK joint logistics support base in Oman has a dry dock large enough to accommodate the Royal Navy's Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers and the Omani-British joint training area provides the British Army with a base for expeditionary warfare. There are also RAF units stationed at Al Udeid air base in Qatar and growing facilities at Donnelly Lines at Al Minhad air base in the United Arab Emirates. Slightly further afield, British Forces Cyprus, more than 10,000 military and civilian personnel, occupy sites across the UK sovereign base areas of Akrotiri and Dhekelia in Cyprus; since the current crisis between Israel and Iran began nearly two weeks ago, additional assets have been deployed so that there are now 14 Typhoon aircraft based at RAF Akrotiri. The government must think wider still. Last week's attack by Palestine Action agitators at RAF Brize Norton has proved that military installations in the UK are not immune from international events. There is also the threat of potential Russian espionage against sites in Britain where Ukrainian military personnel were being trained. Iran is a much diminished military power, but we must still regard its reach as global: Saturday's protest march in London by supporters of the blood-drenched Tehran theocracy proved that the Islamic Republic finds no shortage of useful idiots. What the activities of Palestine Action at RAF Brize Norton also demonstrated was that the security of military facilities is inadequate. The recent Strategic Defence Review warned of 'attacks on the Armed Forces in the UK and on overseas bases' and advised that the Ministry of Defence must 'have additional capabilities for the protection of bases and CNI [critical national infrastructure] in the event of crisis or conflict'. We should not imagine that such a 'crisis or conflict' is in the far-distant future; indeed, it may already have arrived. Last week anti-Israel activists were able to breach the perimeter at Brize Norton, ride electric scooters across the runway and damage two of the RAF's 14 Voyager tanker aircraft at a potential cost of £30 million, in addition to compromising the immediate capability of the armed forces. The government has ordered a review of security, and that must be urgent and comprehensive. The UK is vulnerable. This is not news, or should not be, but we have preferred to ignore it until recently. The likelihood of Iran seeking to retaliate against the United States and its allies merely focuses the mind. The government needs to establish what additional protection military bases at home and abroad reqrequire and how it can be provided – and then it must get on and do it. This cannot wait for quieter times. The front line is everywhere.

The Herald Scotland

29 minutes ago

• The Herald Scotland

Our industrial decline gives a lie to Better together claims

The collateral damage has been massive with whole communities, dependent on these jobs, being virtually abandoned. The subsequent social damage is all too obvious with the skilled jobs that sustained previous generations being replaced by a gig economy characterised by short-term, poorly-paid and often unskilled work. The consequences are there in plain sight – growing levels of poverty, lengthening queues at food banks and the scandal of children going to school poorly clothed and hungry. Of course, a healthy economy depends to a certain extent on inward investment but over the last decades the ownership of a whole host of British companies has moved overseas. Scotland has been hit particularly hard with the loss of control over our once-famous banking and finance sectors. Scottish Power and SSE are largely owned by Iberdola and a Qatari investment company. While foreign capital investment must be welcomed, it brings with it the constant threat of closures and asset-stripping. Regrettably however, it is not just our industrial and financial sectors that have been taken over but vast sections of our utilities and public services as well. In a famous speech in 1964, Harold Wilson slammed the Tories for glorying in a country "where the rewards go to land racketeers and property spivs". It was Neil Kinnock who described the then Conservative government's privatisation policies as "selling off the family silver". However successive governments both Tory and Labour have overseen vast swathes of our public services falling into private hands. So, for example, there are now 27 separate rail companies operating in England and Wales and 10 water companies. The long-suffering public have experienced worsening standards of service and ever-mounting costs while huge bonuses and dividends are being paid out to bosses and shareholders. What makes the situation even worse is that the Government pays out vast sums in subsidies to these failing companies. When you consider that in England large sections of welfare, care, probation, prisons, schools and even the NHS are now in private hands then it is no wonder that our national debt continues to soar while public complaints about failing standards rocket. Is this really the future promised by the Better Together campaign? Eric Melvin, Edinburgh. Read more letters Indy would mean 'normal' politics John NE Rankin (Letters, June 20) is obviously a stickler for accuracy. He castigates attributing the "ongoing ferry shambles" to Calmac rather than Caledonian Marine Assets Ltd and, ultimately in Mr Rankin's opinion, the SNP Government. He cannot then resist taking a swipe at supporters of this government, which he says "could not run a country". Whether or not the SNP could successfully run an independent Scotland is a matter of opinion. What is a matter of fact, however, is that Mr Rankin's opinion of the SNP would be tested by the Scottish electorate in all subsequent elections post-independence. The SNP would stand or fall on its record of government alone. In other words, we would have "normal" politics where voting would be dominated by the same concerns as every other Western European democracy. And, oh yes, the Scottish electorate would not have its near neighbour's choice imposed on it by sheer weight of numbers. David S McCartney, Forres. Make Scotland a beacon for peace Watching the latest developments in the Middle East war from Scotland can make you feel depressed and powerless. Yet Scotland is involved, and should be taking a strong stance against the war. Firstly Scotland is acting as a staging post for the US bombing missions in Iran and their assistance to Israel's war. Prestwick Airport, which is owned by the Scottish Government, has seen large numbers of US war plans landing and being refuelled on their way to wage war on Iran and to assist the Israeli war effort. It's time the Scottish Government closed this route for war by banning US warplanes at Prestwick. Secondly if this war in the Middle East extends to a global war Scotland's nuclear base at Faslane will be the number one target for attack and if it's hit then much of Glasgow will disappear surely it's time that this expensive and ineffective nuclear base was closed. Thirdly Scottish arms industries are supplying the Israeli war machines with vital spare parts and it's time this was ended. Of course I realise that none of this can be achieved while Scotland is part of the UK and where Keir Starmer's Labour Government is guilty of failing to condemn Israel for genocide in Gaza or the US for its warlike interventions' instead they are grovelling to Donal Trump in the hope of crumbs from his table. Support for Scottish independence has reached a new high of 56% recently. Now let's turn that into a pro-independence majority in the Scottish elections next year. If that happens the Scottish Parliament should declare our independence and end our complicity in war and instead make Scotland a beacon for peace in the world. Hugh Kerr, Edinburgh. • I'm an idiot. I admit it. I believed Donald Trump when he said before his election that there would be no more of America's endless wars far from America's shores. Instead he has thrown in his lot with America's triad of evil – the military industrial complex, the Neocons, and the powerful Israeli lobby. Benjamin Netanyahu, facing three charges of corruption at home, has achieved his long-held ambition of bringing the United States into a war with Iran. Trump promised to end the war in Ukraine. He hasn't. He promised to bring peace to the Middle East. He hasn't. Instead he has continued with his country's history of bombing countries and killing thousands. Hiroshima. Nagasaki. Vietnam. Cambodia. Laos. Iraq. Somalia. Libya. Syria. Yemen. Iran. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. William Loneskie, Lauder. Donald Trump (Image: PA)Give us back our licence fee BBC Scotland boasts that Scotland gets 90% of its licence fee for funding. Given the heavy Anglo-centric bias of the BBC platforms funded by the UK-wide licence fee (BBC News 24, Radios 4 and 5 etc), why don't we have 100% of our licence fee back, and use it in Scotland to make programmes relevant to us, our history and culture? Scots traversed Europe for 500 years, then the globe for the next 300, so it need not be parochial. There is also income from BBC Commercial, which brings in a couple of billion pounds a year. Why does Scotland not share in that? GR Weir, Ochiltree. Politicising the bus pass The US Government's cackhanded launch of a 'Trump card' golden visa scheme, its promotional card bearing the visage and signature of that country's current elected head of state, conflates state functions with the personal identity of an incumbent officeholder. That sort of nonsense befits authoritarian tyrannies not democracies Sadly but somehow not surprisingly, the shambles echoes the sorry state of Scotland's bus passes. Rather than simply calling them bus passes, as happened for decades, the separatist regional government emblazons them with the crux decussata. They carry the irrelevant legend 'Saltire cards' (not even their formal name), predictably stylised without a space. English bus passes are at least more suitably named to reflect their purpose. They do bear a St George's Cross though: Scottish separatists' divisive identity politics have spread poison down south, alas. Ought one, though, to call Scotland's bus passes merely 'bus passes'? The scheme's website describes what is properly known as the national entitlement card as 'Scotland's National Smartcard', again grammatically wrong as well as ideologically questionable. In principle, enabling some local government services to be offered digitally could be a helpful move. But an overtly politicised design combined with the Orwellian whiff of identity cards introduced by the back door bear the grubby fingerprints of nationalist authoritarianism. Witness their unthinking use on buses even by primary school pupils. Christopher Ruane, Lanark.