You have to earn £38,700 before your overseas partner/spouse can live in the UK

[belboid]

What counts as earnings:

You and your partner can use:

• income from employment before tax and National Insurance (check your P60 or payslips) - you can only use your own income if you earn it in the UK
• income you earn from self-employment or as a director of a limited company in the UK - check your Self Assessment tax return
• cash savings above £16,000
• money from a pension
• non-work income, for example from property rentals or dividends

If you’re using income from self-employment or employment, you’ll need to prove you or your partner received that income for 6 months or more.

Each non-PAYE element will have its own, detailed, way of being proved. There is very little any individual caseworker could actively choose to accept/ignore - you can either prove it or you can't.

Family visas: apply, extend or switch

Get a family visa for the UK, live with your spouse or relative - eligibility, proof, renewing, financial and English language requirements.

www.gov.uk

 

[Dr. Furface]

Previous reaction from the business community to migrant workers filling job shortages

"Some of those asked to help fill skills gap say they have been effectively paid as little as £5 an hour and charged unexpected fees"

Foreign care workers invited to UK ‘exploited on grand scale’, says union

Some of those asked to help fill skills gap say they have been effectively paid as little as £5 an hour and charged unexpected fees

www.theguardian.com

Care workers will be exempt from the salary threshold increase, although many will be affected by the new rule for family members. They'll inevitably go elsewhere, and the UK's care system will be further screwed.

But sectors such as hospitality will potentially be devastated. For example, a restaurant owner on the radio yesterday said he employs 5 chefs on about £26k each - he said he could maybe increase their pay a little (although would no longer be able to pay them performance bonuses) but it would be impossible to pay them £38k. So his options would be to either employ fewer migrant chefs, thus reducing his capacity and income, or raise salary levels and prices to an unaffordable level also causing him to eventually go out of business. The only other option would be to employ British chefs at the current level, but he can't get those because they just aren't available with the skills he needs or the desire to do the work.

 

[Epona]

It's a government department. It'd be simple for them to check the previous years declared income via tax. If you've got a load of undeclared income they'd probably ask why.

I think you're seriously overestimating the ability of the right hand to know what the left hand is doing when it comes to govt departments, or even local borough councils tbh are not that well co-ordinated.

 

[Epona]

It's (in terms of govt depts/council depts not talking to one another) like when you have to apply for a visitor parking permit from the council and they ask you to show your council tax bill to prove that you live at that address.
eye starts twitching

Sorry for making light of it btw, I'm at a loss when it comes to finding the words to describe what an absolute clusterfuck this entire thing is.
A lot of what is going on right now comes under the heading of so bizarre and cruel that you couldn't make it up - not just over this, but all sorts of things.

 

[Spymaster]

Departments have been failing to centralise or to cooperate on fraud and error for years, so it’s reasonable to assume that this would be a Home Office operation with limited ability to access HMRC records unless a criminal investigation was launched.

There is loads of available expertise in fraud and error identification regarding statements of income, though, because all local authorities need this capability and many buy it in, so fairly easy to mobilise it or scale up.

I really don’t think it’s going to be very complicated. They’ll ask what you earn and tell you to prove it with official documentation. It’s not hard. Lenders do it several million times every year.

If you can’t prove it, that’s your problem. It’s not like they’re trying to make this easy.

 

[Silas Loom]

I really don’t think it’s going to be very complicated. They’ll ask what you earn and tell you to prove it with official documentation. It’s not hard. Lenders do it several million times every year.

If you can’t prove it, that’s your problem. It’s not like they’re trying to make this easy.

I think you are missing the context of what you were originally replying to, which is how the system could be gamed or defeated.

 

[ska invita]

Only the wealthy have freedom of marriage.

I have thought before what I would've done had there been an income threshold when I got married....would I have been prepared to leave Britain for my relationship? I probably wouldn't, not for lack of love, but for other complicated and emotional reasons I need to stay here. What a horrific choice to be forced into by the state.

 

[Kid_Eternity]

i remember thinking that when they brought it in...it already exists! changing a threshold number in a computer is easy by comparison .


i doubt it as it already exists just with a different financial threshold.

This rise won’t happen is my bet. They gave a vague time frame of spring and a lot of signs point to a general election in May which the Tories will lose.

 

[steeplejack]

I really don’t think it’s going to be very complicated. They’ll ask what you earn and tell you to prove it with official documentation. It’s not hard. Lenders do it several million times every year.

If you can’t prove it, that’s your problem. It’s not like they’re trying to make this easy.

Christ, your empathy for the poster suddenly in a very tight and emotionally difficult spot is overwhelming.

Get your snark to fuck, and preferably yourself with it, if you've nothing useful to say.

 

[pbsmooth]

It's all just about performative cruelty at this stage isn't it. TBH I think they've hit the limit of how useful it is to them quite a while ago, the problem is that dickhead Starmer will try and prove he can be even worse.

I think you're half right. It's performative cruelty on one of the few issues where they think they can get more popular support than Labour - being horrible to 'foreigners'.

 

[Monkeygrinder's Organ]

I think you're half right. It's performative cruelty on one of the few issues where they think they can get more popular support than Labour - being horrible to 'foreigners'.

Yes - when I say they've hit the limit of how useful it is I mean there's only so much support they can wring out of it. How many voters at this point are going to be thinking 'well they weren't horrible enough to foreigners before but they've really won me over now'?

 

[story]

This rise won’t happen is my bet. They gave a vague time frame of spring and a lot of signs point to a general election in May which the Tories will lose.

Yes, my assumption is that it’s an attempt to start the election juggernaut moving against immigration.

Cameron’s career move declaration of a Brexit referendum was such a huge success, it makes sense for them to declare some kind of enormous banner policy to get things going.

 

[story]

Yes - when I say they've hit the limit of how useful it is I mean there's only so much support they can wring out of it. How many voters at this point are going to be thinking 'well they weren't horrible enough to foreigners before but they've really won me over now'?

It’s just more of the same. Doesn’t have to be worse, just similar. The Rwanda thing “isn’t working” as intended ( just sweep them all away) so they need something to reassure those voters they’re not going to let it drop.

 

[pbsmooth]

my point was more to counter your idea Starmer would be worse.

 

[Smangus]

If people try to "game" the system and get found out it could quite possibly be considered fraud and they will potentially be in a very difficult place as a result. It's s fucking harmful move by those tories, at the end of the day penalising legal migrants.

 

[T & P]

It's almost as if there had been some kind of significant political decision a few years ago that radically redefined this country's relationship with other nations and the right of their citizens to live and work here, and it had since caused an ever-increasing atmosphere of hostility, restrictions, and social intolerance towards immigrants, turning the nation into an indescribably more unpleasant and hard right-dominated, ugly society in the process. Who would've thought...

 

[MickiQ]

I think you are missing the context of what you were originally replying to, which is how the system could be gamed or defeated.

Subtlety not Spy's finest quality, one of the reasons we love him but he is right the onus will be on the applicant to do the proving. The current guidelines are here:-

Family visas: apply, extend or switch

Get a family visa for the UK, live with your spouse or relative - eligibility, proof, renewing, financial and English language requirements.

www.gov.uk

I would imagine that bar replacing £18,600 with £38,700 (that is one big fucking jump whichever way you look at it) the rules will stay the same though I would imagine that £16K in savings will also go up as well.

What counts as income​

You and your partner can use:

• income from employment before tax and National Insurance (check your P60 or payslips) - you can only use your own income if you earn it in the UK
• income you earn from self-employment or as a director of a limited company in the UK - check your Self Assessment tax return
• cash savings above £16,000
• money from a pension
• non-work income, for example from property rentals or dividends

If you’re using income from self-employment or employment, you’ll need to prove you or your partner received that income for 6 months or more.

That doesn't look easy to game if you ask me. If your income is well below the limit but you have loads of savings so they might very well get suspicious about how come so temporarily borrowing money from a rich uncle is probably a bit iffy.
It does say you and your partner need to earn the income together so if your income isn't high enough but you could definitely prove that your incoming partner had a guaranteed job waiting making up the difference that would probably be enough.
I am wondering who will the first to get really wound up about the fact that if you are working you will have to show your income has been stable for more 6 months but not if you're living off rents or investments.

 

[StoneRoad]

The first one of those criteria will also scupper people currently working abroad who want to return with their spouse ...

 

[The39thStep]

Care workers will be exempt from the salary threshold increase, although many will be affected by the new rule for family members. They'll inevitably go elsewhere, and the UK's care system will be further reduced.

But sectors such as hospitality will potentially be devastated. For example, a restaurant owner on the radio yesterday said he employs 5 chefs on about £26k each - he said he could maybe increase their pay a little (although would no longer be able to pay them performance bonuses) but it would be impossible to pay them £38k. So his options would be to either employ fewer migrant chefs, thus reducing his capacity and income, or raise salary levels and prices to an unaffordable level also causing him to eventually go out of business. The only other option would be to employ British chefs at the current level, but he can't get those because they just aren't available with the skills he needs or the desire to do the work.

I was giving an example of a recent reaction of the business community, the same business community that you hoped would provide a fierce reaction. The first response from said business community is always to say they can't afford it, many build a business model around low wages in which pay rises, minimum salary levels ,and even operating with sufficient staff etc make them unsustainable. Add that to their need to rely on off the peg suitably skilled workers having never invested themselves or collectively in a training and skills strategy and you can begin to understand what is often wrong with such business models.


I am totally against the dependants and family criteria being tied into this proposed scheme and whilst I think the salary threshold is too high I also think that the example you gave of paying qualified chefs £26k is too low.

The sector that should be providing a fierce reaction should be the trade unions and the Labour Party.

 

[Dogsauce]

Shut out the legal routes for migration and more people will make the journey on rubber dinghies etc. Callous, dangerous and stupid.

 

[belboid]

I was giving an example of a recent reaction of the business community, the same business community that you hoped would provide a fierce reaction. The first response from said business community is always to say they can't afford it, many build a business model around low wages in which pay rises, minimum salary levels ,and even operating with sufficient staff etc make them unsustainable. Add that to their need to rely on off the peg suitably skilled workers having never invested themselves or collectively in a training and skills strategy and you can begin to understand what is often wrong with such business models.


I am totally against the dependants and family criteria being tied into this proposed scheme and whilst I think the salary threshold is too high I also think that the example you gave of paying qualified chefs £26k is too low.

The sector that should be providing a fierce reaction should be the trade unions and the Labour Party.

the business model is also largely determined by how much the government will reimburse for that work. This is why pay is so low, even if employers wanted to pay more (lol) only those in the most expensive, solely private, companies could possibly do so. When the 'living wage' was brought in six/seven years back a lot of companies simply got out of the game, there was absolutely no profit in it.

 

[steeplejack]

I was giving an example of a recent reaction of the business community, the same business community that you hoped would provide a fierce reaction. The first response from said business community is always to say they can't afford it, many build a business model around low wages in which pay rises, minimum salary levels ,and even operating with sufficient staff etc make them unsustainable. Add that to their need to rely on off the peg suitably skilled workers having never invested themselves or collectively in a training and skills strategy and you can begin to understand what is often wrong with such business models.

"Fuck business" is still around at the highest levels of government, seemingly.

 

[MickiQ]

The first one of those criteria will also scupper people currently working abroad who want to return with their spouse ...

It's going to depend on the conditions under which you're working abroad I suppose, If your UK employer has sent you abroad but rotates you back to the UK then it will be straightforward. If you found a job abroad under your own steam, you would have to come back alone and find another job first now with a much higher salary than before. 75% of the population earn £18600 or above whereas only 27% earn above £38700. (those figures are from 2021 but they're probably mostly right still)

 

[Kid_Eternity]

Yes, my assumption is that it’s an attempt to start the election juggernaut moving against immigration.

Cameron’s career move declaration of a Brexit referendum was such a huge success, it makes sense for them to declare some kind of enormous banner policy to get things going.

The Tories are basically poisoning the well, the plan is managed decline and set the foundation for a one term Labour government.

 

[story]

I no longer believe they have a plan of any kind at all. Not a coherent one that makes sense across the various ministries. They're just scrambling for power with no care for how to operate it and fuck the consequences.

 

[belboid]

If you are returning to the UK with a partner you will need either a job offer with the requited salary starting within 3 months, or you need £62,500 in savings, currently. As thats x4 the salary requirement I would assume its going to go up to about 155k.

 

[danny la rouge]

 

[The39thStep]

"Fuck business" is still around at the highest levels of government, seemingly.

It's possible to have good business models or at least better business models imo

 

[The39thStep]

the business model is also largely determined by how much the government will reimburse for that work. This is why pay is so low, even if employers wanted to pay more (lol) only those in the most expensive, solely private, companies could possibly do so. When the 'living wage' was brought in six/seven years back a lot of companies simply got out of the game, there was absolutely no profit in it.

Do you mean the care sector and equivalent?

 

[belboid]

Do you mean the care sector and equivalent?

I do!