The government’s decision to impose an income requirement suggests that the true motivation is simply to reduce numbers, as every British family 'stuck' abroad, or separated, helps to reduce net migration.
Jenny Pennington is a Researcher at IPPR
New research published today lays bare the negative impact of the UK’s management of immigration on British people. The report, from the All Party Parliamentary Group on Migration, shows that the government’s efforts to bear down on immigration numbers through tightening rules on family migration has led to hardship for many.
Examples include British families ‘stuck’ abroad, young British children growing up without a parent and in one case a breast-feeding mother separated from her British baby. According to calculations in the report, as many as 47 per cent of people in employment in the UK would fail to meet the income level needed (£18,600 p/a) to sponsor a non-EEA partner to come to the UK.
The report shows how the government’s target to reduce net migration is dominating policy making in this area. The stated aim of the rules is to ensure that migrants coming through the family route are not a ‘burden’ on the state.
However there are much more direct ways of doing this, for example restricting access to benefits or applying higher visa fees. The government’s decision to impose an income requirement (with entirely predictable consequences) instead suggests that the true motivation is simply to reduce numbers – every British family ‘stuck’ abroad, or separated, helps to reduce net migration.
In response to the research, Mark Reckless, a representative of the Home Affairs Select Committee, was keen to speak to the latter point. Speaking on the Today programme he argued that the limits on family migration are vindicated by their contribution to reducing overall ‘net migration’.
However falling migration doesn’t necessarily reduce public concerns. Polling figures released last week show that even though net migration has fallen by almost 40 per cent across the last year, almost two thirds of the population continue to believe that immigration is still rising
Instead of its single-minded focus on net migration, the government needs to confront the difficult trade-offs that migration policy raises, some of which have been clearly illustrated by today’s report. The government should take action to ensure that family migration contributes to life in the UK.
Rather than an arbitrary income test, the government should focus on ensuring that all family migrants come with a satisfactory level of English to be able to participate in and contribute to society, on making sure that the UK welfare system and labour market are fair for everyone, and on supporting integration in local communities.
The APPG report shows how we all lose when migration policy is led by blunt targets about migration numbers. The consequences of the government’s family migration policy may have been unintended, but they were predictable.
37 Responses to “Family Migration: Brits lose out when policy is led by blunt targets”
CausticWally
Nope – still don’t get what you are on about…. Would you mind trying to explain your point again?
CausticWally
Okay – I understand where you are coming from with this. But why limit your castigation of people of modest means who choice to marry and have children to those who chose partners from abroad? Choice, consequences, responsibility, applies with equal force to Joe Bloggs and his Mrs from Clacton-on-Sea as it does to anyone in a more cosmopolitan relationship.
Your argument is essentially that people from better off brackets are entitled to refuse any form of solidarity with those lower down the earnings scale and deny them any of the redistribution which is generally considered necessary in society to counter the tendency of markets to produce unbalanced and wayward outcomes. Adam Smith would have recognised your attitude as an example of what he called the ‘vile maximum of the masters – everything for the rich; nothing for the poor!’
Sparky
I don’t resent you. But this present situation has arisen because of the wholesale abuse of the system under Labour. Sham marriages were completely out of control. Organised criminal gangs were targeting our immigration system. It’s hardly surprising that draconian leglislation was introduced to tackle it.
LB
On the treatment cap.
Apart from the irony that the NHS already caps spending, I wouldn’t.
The reason is quite simple. The NHS is a 2,000 pounds a year insurance scheme. Within any insurance scheme there are those that cost more and those that don’t.
However, it does raise an interesting point. Should we allow in people who are already ill in the knowledge they will cost the UK a lot of money? Lots on the left argue that those who cost the NHS a lot by drinking, should be charged more. Same logic.
Yes, I did assume they weren’t working. However, I notice that you tacitly accepted the idea that there should be a criteria based on how much the contribute.
The 18.6K doesn’t generate enough tax to cover one person. That needs to be over 40K to break even. So yes, you can bring a spouse so long as between you make 80K a year, for as long as you make 80K a year. If you fall in whilst here, you get treatment because you have insurance via the NHS.
Remember, there is nothing stopping you putting your hand into your pocket and agreeing to make up the difference.
The difference between me and you, is that I care about people in Britain being poor because low skilled low paid migration has gone on. That has made lots of people poor, and being poor in the UK is not a particularly nice thing. That’s where I do agree with people on the left. Seems you don’t give a shit about that, you would rather get some arts council money (at the poor’s expense), to produce a confessional poetry event.
Why don’t you ask the poor workers, do they want more money or do they want more migrants to compete against? A bit of democracy woudl be good for the UK.
steven
The NHS has spending caps but it doesn’t means test or pay out based on contributions – it is a universal system, that’s the point.
I didn’t tacitly accept anything; I challenged the assumptions inherent in your comments.
I have nothing but contempt for your allegation that I don’t care about people in Britain being poor. How the hell do you know what I think?
This is one of the public policy issues in the UK I am most passionate about. I have struggled on a low income and many in my family are low-skilled, low-paid workers. The decline of real wages in this country is a disgrace and it has more to do with the 30 year assault on collective bargaining and trade unionism and the government allowing the minimum wage to stagnate.
It also has to do with rogue employers and gangmasters who pay illegally low wages to immigrants but about whom the government is doing nothing. The relatively small number of people affected by the draconian spouse visa rules will do nothing to raise wages, it’s just distraction, which you seem to have swallowed hook, line and sinker.
“Seems you don’t give a shit about that, you would rather get some arts council money (at the poor’s expense), to produce a confessional poetry event.”
What a pathetic statement. Try arguing against what I’ve said instead of some ridiculous 1980s lefty strawman.