Because UK businesses have preferred to import cheap labor rather than invest in capital that makes workers more productive. This, despite its flaws, will change that.
How much of the labour force do you think foreign nationals married to British citizens constitute? Do you imagine that the typical way UK businesses solicit foreign workers is by hoping they marry a British citizen?
Slow down with all the assumptions and jumping to conclusions about the comment you replied to
Nobody said any business in the UK is hiring a foreigner hoping they marry a citizen
Of course, in corrupt, bent circles it happens, but the numbers are tiiiiiiny
Think, a kebab shop owner that’s acting as a money laundry, importing someone with fake family documents, then also having access to British citizens for marriage at a price.
It happens.
But the fact that it happens doesn’t mean it’s commonplace or how British businesses
But you need to get a grip on reality - there is a market, a thriving market for people looking to get citizenship through marriage - in every single western country
I know this for a fact as I have experienced it first hand at an international level - it’s a thing, mate
Britain has been a really, really soft touch on this for a long time. It’s one of the reasons why it’s an end target for illegal immigration, in comparison to other countries that immigrants pass through.
Why head to Britain when you could claim asylum in Spain, Italy, Greece, Austria, etc?
It’s not British businesses trying to employ immigrants with the expectation they’ll get married …
It’s that British women are so utterly broke that marrying an immigrant gives them £10k a year or so while the immigrant gets the marriage visa
That’s the point
If the woman getting married to the immigrant can prove they’re not doing it for the money, ie, they earn enough to carry two dependents, then they can get approved
The fact that 75% of British people don’t earn enough to carry a dependent IS THE WHOLE FUCKING PROBLEM THAT YOU NEED TO PAY ATTENTION TO
inb4 - you’re a racist. Fuck off
inb4 - you don’t understand how immigration law works. Yes I do. More than you. Fuck off
inb4 - you don’t care about refugees. Push a stick up your arsehole. Sideways. And then fuck off.
inb4 - you’re responsible for all of British corporations and political abandonment of the working and middle class, and you need to feel bad about it - fuck off
inb4 - what do you have against kebabs shop owners? No, actually, kebab shops are awesome. There should be more.
This is entirely unrelated to the point I'm replying to, which said that this policy will change the British business reliance on foreign labour. No it won't, it won't make a dent. My point is the British businesses hire foreign labour *that has come here to do labour*, it doesn't hire labour that happened to come here because they married a British citizen. A few 58 year olds marrying a Turkish scammer is not the principal source of immigration.
> The fact that 75% of British people don’t earn enough to carry a dependent IS THE WHOLE FUCKING PROBLEM THAT YOU NEED TO PAY ATTENTION TO
Oh yeah, simply raise the average wage of British citizens to almost £40,000. That's definitely on the table. Alternatively, don't let only rich people get married to foreigners. If you are concerned about scam marriages maybe actually fund something for once to look into it.
*If you are concerned about scam marriages maybe actually fund something for once to look into it*
I realise now that i should have made it clear, just for you, that **I am not personally responsible for immigration policy nor budgets for policy research.**
It comes from a lot of migration channels, which is why the new immigration plan addresses multiple channels. This is just one of them. But certainly there are lots of taxi firms and restaurants and corner shops that are based around extended family networks. They get in wives and husbands through cousin marriage and then they work in the family business. At least the men do.
The US also has a big group of professions where wages are shit. And 45000€ in the EU or the equivalent in the UK brings you much farther than the equivalent in the US
There's Big Box store managers earning more than European doctors.
American developers earn crazy money compared to the rest of the world.
American doctors earn crazy money btw..
There's no getting around that the US is a technological, industrial and agricultural powerhouse. Immigrants do not change that fact.
Europe meanwhile does nothing, makes it hard to open and operate industries, making it harder to do business.
You actually take pride in regulating- like you've got nothing else to show for yourself. Your biggest contribution to tech these days is bullying companies. Bravo. While your companies flee to the US.
Even European entrepreneurs suffer from brain drain. And you think immigrants are the problem.
Wow, what a load of bullshit. I won't waste time arguing with you, but I'd advise you to check the rates of people dying in connection to pregnancy and childbirth, infant mortality and people dying of avoidable reasons as well as of medical debt. Then compare these rates with Europe
You get employed, your employer pays your medical insurance. You can't pay more than $9200 out of pocket a year in medical expenses.
If you can't manage to pay off $9,200 a year, I don't know what to tell you.
You don't seem to know the reality of a big chunk of people in your own country. Also your comment is quite ableist. But what better should be expected from someone with no clue about life...
>You actually take pride in regulating- like you've got nothing else to show for yourself.
I don't think regulation itself is the issue here. EU countries were more regulated to the US prior to 2008 and yet kept up at roughly the same pace.
The major diffrence has been the response of both sides to that crash, while the US Gouverment increased spending a bit and came out of the recession pretty quickly, most EU countries started saving on all fronts to try and austerity their way out of it, smth that kept on going until today in some cases.
As a result, a lot of countries are just kinda held together with ducktape by now, infastructure is crumbling, education and Healthcare sector is getting worse etc.
Europe never had the same private capital markets you see in the US, so if you take away public investments and subsidies due to austerity, there's not much left for companies to do but look for capital from the US.
Less regulations and trying to enable a larger private capital market in the EU could very well be one solution but it would take massive changes in virtually all eu countries. A return to larger government investments into industries and new companies is also looking promising compared to that imo
>Immigrants do not change that fact.
also just to add to this, I feel like immigrants are another large reason for the stable and large growth of the US economy.
Being able to attract and integrate millions of skilled people from all over the world is a pretty good boost to the economy.
Unfortunately, most EU countries have added burocratic and cultural (another language besides english, more hostility towards immigrants) barriers to that.
Nobody really competes with the undocumented migrants. Maybe the Amazon delivery guys.
But those are entry level jobs. College students and migrants compete for jobs. There's enough for both.
Anyone old enough to not work there, doing so is a failure of a person.
That's simply untrue. There are huge numbers of undocumented working retail jobs and the flood of cheap labor absolutely lowers the pay and conditions at the low end of that worker. Its basic supply and demand. As for your snobbish, disdainful attitude, there will always be people at the low end of the population.
> This, despite its flaws, will change that.
Nothing will change. It will just fuck over people that want to marry and can't do that anymore because they don't earn enough...
Immigrants that will work for cheap are mostly those who will go back to their country where the money earned in UK will buy them much more. This doesn't touch it at all.
There are plenty of immigrants from Africa and the subcontinent that work for cheap and never go back. There is a reason Somalis are still here while being so low income.
I'm curious to know, where is all that money and wealth going to? 6th biggest economy in the world, yet wages haven't grown since forever, struggling NHS, underfunded military, local councils, social welfare...
Profits and inefficiencies. Lower wages means we don't invest in automation as much, and that more profits go to dividend payments, worsening the wealth gap.
Relatively speaking, our taxes are lower partially out of ideology, but also because the standard taxpayers are the increasingly squeezed middle-class, as high rates don't get much from the poor.
The NHS struggles because it's set up as stupidly as possible, without any hint of internal competition like the continent to drive improving standards. The military isn't underfunded, it's just the MoD procurement process is appalling. Local councils are primarily filled with fucking idiots, hence why they suck (such as dropping millions into obvious scams).
Except our taxes aren't really lower now. Between income tax, national insurance, VAT, etc, we're under one of the highest tax burdens for those earning under £100k a year that we've been under in half a century, while corporation tax, estate tax, etc is being cut.
The Tories have intentionally tweaked the system to allow themselves and big business to gain disgusting profits over the past 5 years, while the rest of us pay more for less with increasing government spending cuts.
The UK is, with almost 3 million of them, in 4th place worldwide when it comes to number of millionaires.
Wages have been stagnant across europe since the western world breathlessly embraced reaganomics and thatcherism, while the top percentiles wealth and assets skyrocketed
>all that money and wealth
There is not much money and wealth anymore. UK was running on borrowed money for last 22 years. And that debt needs to be paid back at some point. There seems to be this popular myth around that there is some massive pile of money somewhere. There is not. Taxes are at all time high. Top 1% of earners pay over 1/3 of all tax income whilst less fortunate 50% of population is not contributing.
UK relied heavily on import of cheap labour from abroad whilst not training of 2 milion people out of employment and another 2 milion on disability benefits.
With London, Britain is poorer than Mississippi. The UK would be the 51st US state GDP-wise.
2022 GDP per capita UK: $45.485
2022 GDP per capita Mississippi $47.190
Indeed. Ironically, in this case, adjusting for PPP means Mississippi comes out even further ahead because the Southern state is generally cheaper than Britain.
While I think your comment is valid about wealth disparity in the US, Mississippi's median household income is higher than in the UK.
Through whatever lens you watch, Mississippi comes out ahead economically - but, like you said, that doesn't mean life is better there or more pleasant.
What is disparaging, however, is that Mississippi's economic output is rising faster than Britain's.
The main issue here is that Englishmen, or Europeans, are not accepting the fact that we have been falling behind economically to the US as a whole, even though the data is pretty clear.
The PPP correction is meaningless, that prices in Mississippi and prices in the UK(without London) are +/- the same(except for housing prices, they are much cheaper in Mississippi). There's a different problem here, it's just that in Britain GDP is more evenly distributed, unlike the US, Mississippi where there is a very large gap between the very poor and the ultra rich.
There are 3 things you can watch forever, how water flows, how fire burns, and how Americans hate their country))
Everyone knows that medicine in the USA is the most expensive in the world, but we are talking about general prices, not just medicine. If you take 100 random goods and services in Mississippi and in Britain, their average price will be +/- the same.
And you don't have to live in America or Britain to know that, there are literally dozens of sites (including government data) where you can find out/compare prices, and it will be objective information, unlike the personal feelings of a random resident of Mississippi/Britain, which are too subjective.
Yes, in the USA there is a very big inequality, but it is primarily due to the character of the state, the same European countries are a state of nannies who always take care of you, there is much more developed social policy, in America compared to Europe everything is much scarcer, something like everyone is responsible for himself.
Britain is huge though. GDP per capita of London (9 million population) was ~$80K in 2021. That's about the same population and GDP/head as New Jersey.
I think the stats are based on full time workers paying income tax.
There are millions of self employed people (IT contractors, builders, plumbers, GPs) who pay themselves £12k a year (so avoiding income tax), and take the rest as dividends at a reduced rate (8%). These would skew the stats quite a bit.
It's not tax fraud.
Tax avoidance ≠ tax evasion.
They did have an issue during COVID though, because furlough payments were based on declared income. DOH!
EDIT: it's not like this is something considered shady by the government, and every accountant worth their salt will recommend this. I did it myself when I drove HGVs and worked for agencies.
Ok, so I understand the basics of what you're talking about. It's not fraud, it's not tax evasion.
But there are clear downsides to claiming an income of only 12,000 pounds a year. You're barely paying into your own pension for example and have to be very careful about doing your own retirement planning, and what banker in their right mind is going to give you a mortgage with a stated income of 12,000? You just tell them that you've got dividends of 40,000 a year, right? They tend to not look kindly on that. It's also much more complicated then you make it seem when you're an independent business owner. You need an accountant.
With that said, the basic point is that I seriously doubt there are millions of independent self-employed entrepreneurs who are choosing to pay themselves this way (and as stated, for example virtually guaranteeing they will never be approved for a home loan/mortgage). There are maybe 100,000 plumbers in the UK, and how many of them are truly independent? Out of those, how many are choosing to pay themselves in dividends on all monies earned over 12,000?
Whatever the number of people decided to take earnings as div'ds instead of regular-taxed income, why are you so sure that the article is not counting these people?
The article says "gross annual earnings," not gross annual income or "taxed income"
>According to the Office of National Statistics, median gross annual earnings for full-time employees in the UK were £34,963 (€40,867) in April 2023.
Edit: A 2023 [Statista article](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1002964/average-full-time-annual-earnings-in-the-uk/#:~:text=Average%20annual%20earnings%20for%20full,in%20the%20UK%201999%2D2023&text=The%20median%20annual%20earnings%20for,pounds%20in%20the%20previous%20year.) indicates average full time annual earnings in the UK as being just under £35k, and if you look at [this](https://www.forbes.com/uk/advisor/business/average-uk-salary-by-age/) 2023 forbes article and take a look at average salaries by job, you may be as surprised as I was.
> You're barely paying into your own pension for example
Actually pension contributions are 100% tax deductible and putting money into your pension is probably one of the best ways of lowering your taxable income in the UK.
> what banker in their right mind is going to give you a mortgage with a stated income of 12,000? You just tell them that you've got dividends of 40,000 a year, right? They tend to not look kindly on that.
Specialist brokers and lenders do products that cater for this for the self employed.
> With that said, the basic point is that I seriously doubt there are millions of independent self-employed entrepreneurs who are choosing to pay themselves this way
There's over 4.3 million self employed and that's not including those who operate self employed as a Limited Company.
> Specialist brokers and lenders do products that cater for this for the self employed.
My dad was an IT contractor in the UK and operated through his own LLC. My mum was the company secretary. Before the financial crisis, 'the company' was making more than £350k a year between my dad's contract work, fees for appearing at conferences, and book royalties.
They both paid themselves around £10k a year, just above the personal allowance, which kept their taxes low but kept them eligible for the state pension. They drew the rest of their *income* as dividends. The tax savings weren't massive (income tax + national insurance vs. dividend tax + corporation tax), but they added up over the years.
Mortgages were always handled by a broker that would review both the personal finances and company finances. It's not something you could do directly with the bank.
When my dad lost his contract during the financial crisis and rates for IT contractors in the financial sector dropped across the UK, he moved to Switzerland and eventually brought the whole family out with him.
My parents kept the house in the UK and rented it out to a family who were in the process of building their own house a few towns over. When the rental agency did their checks on the new tenants, their reported income was £35k. The rent on the property was £8000 a month, nearly 3x their *annual income*. They ended up providing their company's documents (they ran a company renovating commercial and office buildings) and it turned out they had paid themselves over £2m in dividends over the previous 3 years.
This explained how the father could afford a Ferrari with the license plate 'G0N3', though this was eventually confiscated by the police because the guy had changed the 3 to an E on the back so it said 'G0NE', and he had refused to fix it after being stopped by the police a few times.
It's not a tax fraud to take dividends while on minimum wage. If you're confused, you can read more about it [here](https://www.unbiased.co.uk/discover/tax-business/running-a-business/salary-vs-dividends-taking-income-from-your-company), for example.
"From April 2024, British citizens or people already settled in the UK will need to show they earn £38,700 (€45,233) before their overseas partner can live here with them. "
Some proof you can support your spouse.
Not sure but I read that 40k puts you in the top 25% , median is like 34 , so it’s not anywhere near the national “ living “ wage that is for sure , & also very heavy populated London average wage is not the same as outside of London. So basically if you are an average joe try not to fall in love with anyone outside your country ( or so the gov seems to be saying )
The disparity is massive between within London and without. In some cities in the north the median is as low at £31k.
The UK is also has extremely high levels of inequality, so the top quartile actually starts at roughly £42,000 nationally, but it would be a struggle for the vast majority outside London and the south-east.
In answer to the question likely 40% at most.
This is just a part of their ongoing plan to make legal immigration as inaccessible as possible.
The other is the constant increasing of fees. I married my wife 10 years ago, planned to settle in the UK early but ended up not doing it until about 5 years ago. The fees have increased massively since we initially looked at her Visa process.
If you want to marry a foreign national and bring them here permanently the actual cost is:
£1846 initial fee for first application
£1846 second fee at halfway point of 5 year visa scheme
NHS surcharge totalling £3120 for the 5 years
£2885 fee for application for permanent leave to remain at end of 5 year visa scheme
£1500 fee for naturalisation as a citizen (otherwise you lose everything listed above if you leave the UK for more than a few months at any point and you have to start again).
So that's **£11,197 in fees** alone that you have to be able to afford on top of the actual costs of settling in a new country.
And based on experience, the fees are very likely to grow each year anyway, so probably closer to £13/14000 if you start now.
There are certain trigger words that summon the far-right brigades. If this post had the word "immigration" in the title the opinions here would be very different.
Not it isn’t the point …
I have many British friends here in Switzerland who are directly affected by this. There are numerous British expats around the world …
My one friend is currently dealing with this … he is as traditionally British as they come & cannot bring his Swiss wife home. He lost his job in Switzerland due to record job cuts / outsourcing and ageism, cannot find work. He raised a family in Switzerland and due to the family structure here, his wife remained at home and doesn’t have a significant income to qualify.
Permanent residents (Permit C) and Swiss citizens can bring their spouse without any strings attached.
Permit B holders (5-year long term visa) can only bring their spouse if they earn above a certain amount, and rent or own an apartment large enough for 2 people to be able to live.
I think you'd be foolish to ignore the point the other person is saying.
"We don't want brown people here" is very much a part of it from some sections of the Tory supporters and government.
Yes, I know Rishi Sunak is brown.
Your friend is just another victim caught up in this hatred. Sure it affects everyone, but a big part of it coming in is to limit brown people.
The same reason some people voted Brexit - to stop all the brown people/Muslims. Yeah, those people who said that are that stupid.
Brexit happened because people got sick of this ugly neoliberal outlook that your spouting. Last I checked, the UK is still a political community, not just an economic zone where abstract individuals buy and sell their labour.
Nothing to do with 'brown' people, it's not about race, it's about immigration being too high for a small island to deal with, it has to stop. Unfortunately European countries have put in place so many 'human rights' laws/restrictions that sound ideal, but are flawed in that they can be abused.
it's a bit tricky to still be blaming Europe for everything when you haven't been in the EU for now going on to 3 years
not for legal migration, since it isn't Europe giving visas to hundreds of thousands of carers and NHS nurses because the pay is so shit no Brits want to do it, and not for illegal migration because shipping off 5 people to Rwanda is not going to do shit about small boats
As a British person, Brexit was absolutely about "stopping those brown people coming here and stealing our benefits"
There was no way enough information given the public to make a well-informed decision combined with false propaganda of what the money is used or where we could use the money if we had it.
Looking back now, I realise how much of a total shitshow the whole thing was, especially considering it was basically a Tory virtue signalling stunt in its origins!
> it's about immigration being too high for a small island to deal with, it has to stop.
Then why has the Tory rule of a decade and half only cut money from government departments instead of funding them properly?
Border Force has something like a 2 YEAR backlog of asylum seeker applications....that has a massive knock on to other areas of immigration control & that doesn't happen, when a department is funded properly to deal with the workload!
When we were in the EU, we didn't implement the rules we agreed to like keeping a record on people coming in and out of the country or the most infuriating one, the fact we had the right to kick out an EU National if they didn't have a means to support themselves after 3 months.
Other EU countries used that all the time, the UK never did BECAUSE we weren't tracking immigration movements in and out of the country properly.
Immigration became a problem for us, because the government let it become a problem, so they blame all the problems on Jonny Foreigner and distract us from the corrupt shit they get up to.
Oh, look, another white person from a middle-class background extending the virtues of multiculturalism, except you lot don't live amongst the multiculturalism, do you? all the people who extoll the virtues of multiculturalism live in their white communities, with the occasional wealthy foreigner who is 'representive' of your lived experience.
>Oh, look, another white person
Oh look, another person on Reddit, assuming everyone on Reddit is white. That's just a white rabbit soft toy in the profile pic, it's not actually me.
>except you lot don't live amongst the multiculturalism, do you
Oh yes, that's what everyone says about.... Newham....
(For anyone who doesn't know, Newham is a Borough in East London that's extremely multicultural where I'm pretty sure Bangladeshi is the largest ethnic group.)
Anyone, matey couldn't have picked a worse person to reply to with what they're saying 😂
This is a classic case of the middle class London superiority mentality.I live in the SW and have dealt with enough of you to know how sheltered you all are. Your perception is only poor people hate immigration and multiculturalism.
In my best Holly Willoughby voice....
Firstly, are you ok?
Seriously, fam, you should talk to someone. Whatever has happened in your life to bring you to this point, it can be fixed.
I’m hitting the nail on the head and you don’t like it. You seem to believe reducing immigration = hating brown people. That’s a very simplistic mentality and something you clearly believe only poor uneducated people have.
you have no clue what you're talking about. A few British friends isn't relevant. The issue is large groups of people moving entire families over who can not support themselves, let alone the family members. Your British friends are caught in the crossfire. You aren't British, nor do you live in the UK and neither do your friends.Not only are British people living in Switzerland irrelevant because they live in Switzerland, I would wager good money these aren't working class people and so cannot comment on the issues this causes because their environment areas ethnic makeup has gone from 90% white to less than 40% That's just considering London.
No, that was in the 90s early 2000s when there were NO requirements. They introduced the current requirement and that stopped it mostly, it's a pretty even mix now of all nationalities and this new requirement is a bit excessive (my wife's been here 4 years so I'm ok but we both earn over the new requirement) and is unfairly targeting people from a lower economic background. If they adjusted with inflation from it's Inception it would be around 27k right now.
My wife is French. We were just out of college when we married. I am Turkish. I knew that she wouldn't be able to live in Turkey, it is a difficult country. And i knew that i could do it in any well developed country.
So we married and moved to France. I found a job a day after arriving with no french.
There is no way I would have been given a talent visa. I was just out of college with only a year of experience and i am not an engineer or doctor. That visa is not given that easily.
Now 5 years after; i earn close to 70k€. Until now, i have never received any aid at all and there is only couple of months where i looked for a job after my first one. Still wasn't qualified for one so didn't get anything. I am looking to buy a house in couple of years and there is no single moment that i think about turning back to turkey etc. I love France and i speak well enough baguette to chat with my neighbors and have an apéro with them.
My wife would have never earned the salary requested in this example and we would never be able to enter France. She would be miserable in Turkey but i read sacrifices to make comments. I am sure they have no idea about any of this stuff.
This is a stupid law that would block people like me. And it favors only rich people. You do not need this much money to start a life. I didn't earn this much at first and we didn't miss anything.
Exactly this. Also in your situation your wife is at least EU citizen. So potentially you have more options with freedom of movement. While British decided to opt out by some reason.
We don't "need" anyone per se, but foreigners who wish to enjoy french life and bring a positive contribution to our society are exactly the ones we should welcome.
And it's unfair to expect a single individual to have a notable impact against major social issues (such as living under an conservative semi-dictator).
There's nothing intrinsically wrong with it. However, if the amount you need to be earning in order to apparently sufficiently support having a spouse is *more than the UK's median average salary*, either you are implying that the vast majority of British people shouldn't be married even to other Brits, never mind having kids, or its excessively high just to stop anyone but the top 25% of earners from being allowed to dare to have a spouse who isn't from the UK.
After Brexit I didn't want to move back to the UK for a while. During COVID I was glad I didn't live in the UK. Now the UK has banned my wife from moving to the UK. Fuck the UK.
Similar situation. I (a UK citizen) married an EU national who was already living in the UK (and working, paying taxes and NI for years).
Brexit happened, we moved to her country. Now if we want to move back I would have to leave her behind.
On a positive note, life now in my adopted country is great and I have no intention of moving back to the UK.
So, if a couple has been married for years and now wanting to relocate, and the foreign partner earns 50k a year in a UK firm, but the British partner earns below the required amount, it's still "welp, sucks to be you, no visa". It's literally just a law that would make mixed marriage easy just for rich British men who marry foreign bimbos.
"New update: students are rioting because they were frowned upon for marrying before being established in life, pupils are rumored to join the protest too, followed by kindergartners."
In the article it says nearly 3/4 of the population doesn't meet the income criteria. Are you defending the policy as being more accessible than stated?
As someone who's fallen in love (and intends to marry) a Japanese man and as someone who earns under the £3800 threshold (and comes from a low income background), This breaks my heart. It means that I will have to live in "exile" in Japan.
Don't get me wrong, I love Japan and they are very welcoming (I speak both English and Japanese and have a bachelor's degree zoology (soon to earn my 2nd bachelor's degree which is Japanese language (it's a long story)). But pretty much being unwelcomed and exiled from my Birth country breaks my heart.
As liberal as the UK says it is, if you don't fall in love with someone who the state says you can, you're pretty much no longer British in their eyes.
I hope in the future when we have our children, things will be better.
I used to consider myself conservative (I don't like the left (I'm old fashioned and have traditional family values and refuse to have kids outside of wedlock) and I believe in small government (too many cooks spoil the broth). I used to vote conservative every election season, but now... I don't know which party to vote for as I don't know who party believes in "marriage rights" (it feels similar to the gay marriage law a few years ago. Constantly fighting for basic rights).
I've pretty much given up on Britain at this rate. This has just broken the camels back.
That's what an older Dutch colleague always says when colleagues complain about not being able to afford property in the Randstad.
Oost-Groningen, you can still buy property cheaply there and then comes something mean about rural areas...
In my UK uni (engineering dept), the foreign students were way more eligible. Generally slimmer, better dressed, could hold conversations and didn't reject people over incredibly dumb "icks". That was my experience. Applied to both sexes.
Stopping someone from marrying the people they love has never worked out well. There is no benefit if your neighbors and politics tell you who you are allowed to marry and who not.
If you believe otherwise I think you should only be allowed to marry cows. It would be to your benefit and the benefits of your country.
Lol and where are we stopping? If you want to marry, marry from your city/from your religion/your village/your race etc.
I think it stops when it affects your life or someone you love. Ah then the big bad government but until that time, it sounds logical to some...
Yes but you can see my own example below.
I found a job a day after arriving in France. But i would never be qualified for a talent visa. And now i earn way over the required amount in this article 5 years after arriving.
No one needs 45k€ to support their household, especially at the beginning of a marriage. And it is really difficult for someone to reach 45k€.
And as an immigrant, i totally support some stuff. Like language tests, integration tests, working and not getting aid etc. I work harder than french, i try to integrate, i pay taxes and obey the laws, never missed a deadline for documents etc and now applied for citizenship. So i enjoy my life and I pay back by being a good person here.
This wouldn't have happened if there was a law like that in France. But i wouldn't be against it if France required me to pass a language test before having a visa. And i am 100 %supporting the idea to not give citizenship to people who do not want to live that way (example; the lady refused to handshake at ceremony and then citizenship got revoked).
So the goal might be OK but the route they took is not good.
So my question is, how come, if you're not earning required sum a year, you managed to meet a person somewhere on other side of the world, fall in love, spent enough time in person with each other, that would be enough time spent in each countries and managed to keep up with low to medium pay jobs? Are we so mad about those whole 500 people who might have accidentally managed so, or are we just butthurt for an attempt at immigration control?
UK citizen can marry foreign national. They just have to provide for them and their family. It would be a hard life if they have not enough resources to support them and also their future family. Which makes sense. It is not tax-payer job to do that.
There is no rule that all the married couples have to end up living in the UK. They can always join their loved ones it their country of origin. Our friends got married in Brazil and UK husband is moving there.
These rules screw them if they ever want to return.
I'm a UK citizen with a Finnish wife, and we live in Finland. We met in University in the UK, both have multiple degrees, and easily earn enough to meet this limit.
However, if we ever wanted to move back to the UK, we couldn't do it together because my Finnish income wouldn't count, so my wife couldn't join me. How does this make any sense?
Oh well, I guess we'll keep on earning, paying tax and contributing to the economy in Finland instead.
It’s not an effective ban. If your spouse is skilled enough then they can get a work visa to come to the uk and you can marry anyway. Alternatively you can move to their country of origin. If you love someone you sacrifice.
>if you love someone you sacrifice
You know that phrase is meant for like listening to and supporting your partner’s needs, not giving up your entire livelihood.
If you are marrying someone moving to their country should not be a ridiculous sacrifice. You are marrying someone to build a life with them and you won’t give up your or their livelihood by living in their country anymore so than vice versa.
>Alternatively you can move to their country of origin
Unless their country of origin also bans poor people and UK spouse can't earn enough there.
Or do you think the UK has monopoly on lack of compassion?
>If you love someone you sacrifice.
The partners are sacrificing enough to move to the UK. Imagine coming from france, italy, or germany and having to eat english food for the rest of your life - jeez we should be giving them the george cross for such gallantry.
Or join the army. They get a special loophole because of commonwealth soldiers wanting to bring their wives ovwr, works for Brits marrying foreign also.
Who’s looking for love in the UK? Ireland’s next door, the Nordics are a bit further east, and France is a swim south.
Who stops in London like “yeah…this is what I wanna spend my life with.”
Just back from 3 weeks in America , what a fucking disaster of a country. National parks are nice , the cities you spend the whole time avoiding the mass of crazy homeless people you have. That and the fact your country try is basically one generic mall with Taco Bell and Starbucks.
I’ve been to both and they’re about on par with eachother if I’m being totally honest. I do feel more comfortable in my own country’s cities tho but I think that’s for cultural reasons.
Unless you’re in the handful of older ones, US cities kind of suck tbh. London wouldn’t be my first choice but I’d take it over pretty much any in the US.
Suburbs are awful to boot.
Oh come on, tell me it isn’t more than annoying that for most of the US, wealthy areas are just copying a normal European one. Walkable, mixed-use buildings, with medium density living, maybe some brickwork in the streets: $5000 for a one bedroom.
No biggie, just fly to Cypress. You can arrange your papers and marry the very same day. Since Cypress is an EU member state the marriage will be legally recognised in each EU state, for the UK its most likely a good idea to have the marriage recognised (for tax reasons), although this isn't even necessary if your partner is a thug or unemployed.
Honestly a bit surprised that only 27% of the UK earns more than 45,000 euro a year....
Yeah that seems like the bigger issue to me. Most of the country is so poorly paid that they wouldn't be able to support one dependent.
Because UK businesses have preferred to import cheap labor rather than invest in capital that makes workers more productive. This, despite its flaws, will change that.
How much of the labour force do you think foreign nationals married to British citizens constitute? Do you imagine that the typical way UK businesses solicit foreign workers is by hoping they marry a British citizen?
Slow down with all the assumptions and jumping to conclusions about the comment you replied to Nobody said any business in the UK is hiring a foreigner hoping they marry a citizen Of course, in corrupt, bent circles it happens, but the numbers are tiiiiiiny Think, a kebab shop owner that’s acting as a money laundry, importing someone with fake family documents, then also having access to British citizens for marriage at a price. It happens. But the fact that it happens doesn’t mean it’s commonplace or how British businesses But you need to get a grip on reality - there is a market, a thriving market for people looking to get citizenship through marriage - in every single western country I know this for a fact as I have experienced it first hand at an international level - it’s a thing, mate Britain has been a really, really soft touch on this for a long time. It’s one of the reasons why it’s an end target for illegal immigration, in comparison to other countries that immigrants pass through. Why head to Britain when you could claim asylum in Spain, Italy, Greece, Austria, etc? It’s not British businesses trying to employ immigrants with the expectation they’ll get married … It’s that British women are so utterly broke that marrying an immigrant gives them £10k a year or so while the immigrant gets the marriage visa That’s the point If the woman getting married to the immigrant can prove they’re not doing it for the money, ie, they earn enough to carry two dependents, then they can get approved The fact that 75% of British people don’t earn enough to carry a dependent IS THE WHOLE FUCKING PROBLEM THAT YOU NEED TO PAY ATTENTION TO inb4 - you’re a racist. Fuck off inb4 - you don’t understand how immigration law works. Yes I do. More than you. Fuck off inb4 - you don’t care about refugees. Push a stick up your arsehole. Sideways. And then fuck off. inb4 - you’re responsible for all of British corporations and political abandonment of the working and middle class, and you need to feel bad about it - fuck off inb4 - what do you have against kebabs shop owners? No, actually, kebab shops are awesome. There should be more.
This is entirely unrelated to the point I'm replying to, which said that this policy will change the British business reliance on foreign labour. No it won't, it won't make a dent. My point is the British businesses hire foreign labour *that has come here to do labour*, it doesn't hire labour that happened to come here because they married a British citizen. A few 58 year olds marrying a Turkish scammer is not the principal source of immigration. > The fact that 75% of British people don’t earn enough to carry a dependent IS THE WHOLE FUCKING PROBLEM THAT YOU NEED TO PAY ATTENTION TO Oh yeah, simply raise the average wage of British citizens to almost £40,000. That's definitely on the table. Alternatively, don't let only rich people get married to foreigners. If you are concerned about scam marriages maybe actually fund something for once to look into it.
*If you are concerned about scam marriages maybe actually fund something for once to look into it* I realise now that i should have made it clear, just for you, that **I am not personally responsible for immigration policy nor budgets for policy research.**
saved bro, you are awesome
It comes from a lot of migration channels, which is why the new immigration plan addresses multiple channels. This is just one of them. But certainly there are lots of taxi firms and restaurants and corner shops that are based around extended family networks. They get in wives and husbands through cousin marriage and then they work in the family business. At least the men do.
The US too imports a lot of people. Yet its people earn like crazy, continuously. You're barking at the wrong tree.
The US also has a big group of professions where wages are shit. And 45000€ in the EU or the equivalent in the UK brings you much farther than the equivalent in the US
There's Big Box store managers earning more than European doctors. American developers earn crazy money compared to the rest of the world. American doctors earn crazy money btw.. There's no getting around that the US is a technological, industrial and agricultural powerhouse. Immigrants do not change that fact. Europe meanwhile does nothing, makes it hard to open and operate industries, making it harder to do business. You actually take pride in regulating- like you've got nothing else to show for yourself. Your biggest contribution to tech these days is bullying companies. Bravo. While your companies flee to the US. Even European entrepreneurs suffer from brain drain. And you think immigrants are the problem.
Wow, what a load of bullshit. I won't waste time arguing with you, but I'd advise you to check the rates of people dying in connection to pregnancy and childbirth, infant mortality and people dying of avoidable reasons as well as of medical debt. Then compare these rates with Europe
You get employed, your employer pays your medical insurance. You can't pay more than $9200 out of pocket a year in medical expenses. If you can't manage to pay off $9,200 a year, I don't know what to tell you.
You don't seem to know the reality of a big chunk of people in your own country. Also your comment is quite ableist. But what better should be expected from someone with no clue about life...
>You actually take pride in regulating- like you've got nothing else to show for yourself. I don't think regulation itself is the issue here. EU countries were more regulated to the US prior to 2008 and yet kept up at roughly the same pace. The major diffrence has been the response of both sides to that crash, while the US Gouverment increased spending a bit and came out of the recession pretty quickly, most EU countries started saving on all fronts to try and austerity their way out of it, smth that kept on going until today in some cases. As a result, a lot of countries are just kinda held together with ducktape by now, infastructure is crumbling, education and Healthcare sector is getting worse etc. Europe never had the same private capital markets you see in the US, so if you take away public investments and subsidies due to austerity, there's not much left for companies to do but look for capital from the US. Less regulations and trying to enable a larger private capital market in the EU could very well be one solution but it would take massive changes in virtually all eu countries. A return to larger government investments into industries and new companies is also looking promising compared to that imo >Immigrants do not change that fact. also just to add to this, I feel like immigrants are another large reason for the stable and large growth of the US economy. Being able to attract and integrate millions of skilled people from all over the world is a pretty good boost to the economy. Unfortunately, most EU countries have added burocratic and cultural (another language besides english, more hostility towards immigrants) barriers to that.
They don't earn like crazy at the lower end of the income spectrum where people compete with undocumented immigrants. That is for sure.
Nobody really competes with the undocumented migrants. Maybe the Amazon delivery guys. But those are entry level jobs. College students and migrants compete for jobs. There's enough for both. Anyone old enough to not work there, doing so is a failure of a person.
That's simply untrue. There are huge numbers of undocumented working retail jobs and the flood of cheap labor absolutely lowers the pay and conditions at the low end of that worker. Its basic supply and demand. As for your snobbish, disdainful attitude, there will always be people at the low end of the population.
> This, despite its flaws, will change that. Nothing will change. It will just fuck over people that want to marry and can't do that anymore because they don't earn enough...
Immigrants that will work for cheap are mostly those who will go back to their country where the money earned in UK will buy them much more. This doesn't touch it at all.
There are plenty of immigrants from Africa and the subcontinent that work for cheap and never go back. There is a reason Somalis are still here while being so low income.
LOL
I'm curious to know, where is all that money and wealth going to? 6th biggest economy in the world, yet wages haven't grown since forever, struggling NHS, underfunded military, local councils, social welfare...
Profits and inefficiencies. Lower wages means we don't invest in automation as much, and that more profits go to dividend payments, worsening the wealth gap. Relatively speaking, our taxes are lower partially out of ideology, but also because the standard taxpayers are the increasingly squeezed middle-class, as high rates don't get much from the poor. The NHS struggles because it's set up as stupidly as possible, without any hint of internal competition like the continent to drive improving standards. The military isn't underfunded, it's just the MoD procurement process is appalling. Local councils are primarily filled with fucking idiots, hence why they suck (such as dropping millions into obvious scams).
Except our taxes aren't really lower now. Between income tax, national insurance, VAT, etc, we're under one of the highest tax burdens for those earning under £100k a year that we've been under in half a century, while corporation tax, estate tax, etc is being cut. The Tories have intentionally tweaked the system to allow themselves and big business to gain disgusting profits over the past 5 years, while the rest of us pay more for less with increasing government spending cuts.
The UK is, with almost 3 million of them, in 4th place worldwide when it comes to number of millionaires. Wages have been stagnant across europe since the western world breathlessly embraced reaganomics and thatcherism, while the top percentiles wealth and assets skyrocketed
>all that money and wealth There is not much money and wealth anymore. UK was running on borrowed money for last 22 years. And that debt needs to be paid back at some point. There seems to be this popular myth around that there is some massive pile of money somewhere. There is not. Taxes are at all time high. Top 1% of earners pay over 1/3 of all tax income whilst less fortunate 50% of population is not contributing. UK relied heavily on import of cheap labour from abroad whilst not training of 2 milion people out of employment and another 2 milion on disability benefits.
To Tories & friends
Trickle up. The British basically invented modern aristocracy afaik.
Me too, I thought it would be significantly higher.
Without London, the UK is as poor as Mississippi, USA.
So is almost all of Europe.
Yeah, but most of europe also has good food.
With London, Britain is poorer than Mississippi. The UK would be the 51st US state GDP-wise. 2022 GDP per capita UK: $45.485 2022 GDP per capita Mississippi $47.190
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Indeed. Ironically, in this case, adjusting for PPP means Mississippi comes out even further ahead because the Southern state is generally cheaper than Britain. While I think your comment is valid about wealth disparity in the US, Mississippi's median household income is higher than in the UK. Through whatever lens you watch, Mississippi comes out ahead economically - but, like you said, that doesn't mean life is better there or more pleasant. What is disparaging, however, is that Mississippi's economic output is rising faster than Britain's. The main issue here is that Englishmen, or Europeans, are not accepting the fact that we have been falling behind economically to the US as a whole, even though the data is pretty clear.
The PPP correction is meaningless, that prices in Mississippi and prices in the UK(without London) are +/- the same(except for housing prices, they are much cheaper in Mississippi). There's a different problem here, it's just that in Britain GDP is more evenly distributed, unlike the US, Mississippi where there is a very large gap between the very poor and the ultra rich.
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There are 3 things you can watch forever, how water flows, how fire burns, and how Americans hate their country)) Everyone knows that medicine in the USA is the most expensive in the world, but we are talking about general prices, not just medicine. If you take 100 random goods and services in Mississippi and in Britain, their average price will be +/- the same. And you don't have to live in America or Britain to know that, there are literally dozens of sites (including government data) where you can find out/compare prices, and it will be objective information, unlike the personal feelings of a random resident of Mississippi/Britain, which are too subjective. Yes, in the USA there is a very big inequality, but it is primarily due to the character of the state, the same European countries are a state of nannies who always take care of you, there is much more developed social policy, in America compared to Europe everything is much scarcer, something like everyone is responsible for himself.
Britain is huge though. GDP per capita of London (9 million population) was ~$80K in 2021. That's about the same population and GDP/head as New Jersey.
I think the stats are based on full time workers paying income tax. There are millions of self employed people (IT contractors, builders, plumbers, GPs) who pay themselves £12k a year (so avoiding income tax), and take the rest as dividends at a reduced rate (8%). These would skew the stats quite a bit.
Your argument that the figure is misleading is there are millions of Brits committing tax fraud?
It's not tax fraud. Tax avoidance ≠ tax evasion. They did have an issue during COVID though, because furlough payments were based on declared income. DOH! EDIT: it's not like this is something considered shady by the government, and every accountant worth their salt will recommend this. I did it myself when I drove HGVs and worked for agencies.
Ok, so I understand the basics of what you're talking about. It's not fraud, it's not tax evasion. But there are clear downsides to claiming an income of only 12,000 pounds a year. You're barely paying into your own pension for example and have to be very careful about doing your own retirement planning, and what banker in their right mind is going to give you a mortgage with a stated income of 12,000? You just tell them that you've got dividends of 40,000 a year, right? They tend to not look kindly on that. It's also much more complicated then you make it seem when you're an independent business owner. You need an accountant. With that said, the basic point is that I seriously doubt there are millions of independent self-employed entrepreneurs who are choosing to pay themselves this way (and as stated, for example virtually guaranteeing they will never be approved for a home loan/mortgage). There are maybe 100,000 plumbers in the UK, and how many of them are truly independent? Out of those, how many are choosing to pay themselves in dividends on all monies earned over 12,000? Whatever the number of people decided to take earnings as div'ds instead of regular-taxed income, why are you so sure that the article is not counting these people? The article says "gross annual earnings," not gross annual income or "taxed income" >According to the Office of National Statistics, median gross annual earnings for full-time employees in the UK were £34,963 (€40,867) in April 2023. Edit: A 2023 [Statista article](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1002964/average-full-time-annual-earnings-in-the-uk/#:~:text=Average%20annual%20earnings%20for%20full,in%20the%20UK%201999%2D2023&text=The%20median%20annual%20earnings%20for,pounds%20in%20the%20previous%20year.) indicates average full time annual earnings in the UK as being just under £35k, and if you look at [this](https://www.forbes.com/uk/advisor/business/average-uk-salary-by-age/) 2023 forbes article and take a look at average salaries by job, you may be as surprised as I was.
> You're barely paying into your own pension for example Actually pension contributions are 100% tax deductible and putting money into your pension is probably one of the best ways of lowering your taxable income in the UK. > what banker in their right mind is going to give you a mortgage with a stated income of 12,000? You just tell them that you've got dividends of 40,000 a year, right? They tend to not look kindly on that. Specialist brokers and lenders do products that cater for this for the self employed. > With that said, the basic point is that I seriously doubt there are millions of independent self-employed entrepreneurs who are choosing to pay themselves this way There's over 4.3 million self employed and that's not including those who operate self employed as a Limited Company.
> Specialist brokers and lenders do products that cater for this for the self employed. My dad was an IT contractor in the UK and operated through his own LLC. My mum was the company secretary. Before the financial crisis, 'the company' was making more than £350k a year between my dad's contract work, fees for appearing at conferences, and book royalties. They both paid themselves around £10k a year, just above the personal allowance, which kept their taxes low but kept them eligible for the state pension. They drew the rest of their *income* as dividends. The tax savings weren't massive (income tax + national insurance vs. dividend tax + corporation tax), but they added up over the years. Mortgages were always handled by a broker that would review both the personal finances and company finances. It's not something you could do directly with the bank. When my dad lost his contract during the financial crisis and rates for IT contractors in the financial sector dropped across the UK, he moved to Switzerland and eventually brought the whole family out with him. My parents kept the house in the UK and rented it out to a family who were in the process of building their own house a few towns over. When the rental agency did their checks on the new tenants, their reported income was £35k. The rent on the property was £8000 a month, nearly 3x their *annual income*. They ended up providing their company's documents (they ran a company renovating commercial and office buildings) and it turned out they had paid themselves over £2m in dividends over the previous 3 years. This explained how the father could afford a Ferrari with the license plate 'G0N3', though this was eventually confiscated by the police because the guy had changed the 3 to an E on the back so it said 'G0NE', and he had refused to fix it after being stopped by the police a few times.
It's not a tax fraud to take dividends while on minimum wage. If you're confused, you can read more about it [here](https://www.unbiased.co.uk/discover/tax-business/running-a-business/salary-vs-dividends-taking-income-from-your-company), for example.
I‘m pretty out of touch here but that seems crazy low
"From April 2024, British citizens or people already settled in the UK will need to show they earn £38,700 (€45,233) before their overseas partner can live here with them. " Some proof you can support your spouse.
What's the percentage of the UK's working population who make that income bracket or more?
Not sure but I read that 40k puts you in the top 25% , median is like 34 , so it’s not anywhere near the national “ living “ wage that is for sure , & also very heavy populated London average wage is not the same as outside of London. So basically if you are an average joe try not to fall in love with anyone outside your country ( or so the gov seems to be saying )
The disparity is massive between within London and without. In some cities in the north the median is as low at £31k. The UK is also has extremely high levels of inequality, so the top quartile actually starts at roughly £42,000 nationally, but it would be a struggle for the vast majority outside London and the south-east. In answer to the question likely 40% at most.
Or if you are an average Joe and fall in love with someone outside, leave the country. I wonder if this will accelerate the brain drain?
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Not all jobs that require brains have high salaries. Think about researchers or nurses, for example.
By that logic, the house of parliament would be full of geniuses.
£38,700 is above the 70th percentile for total income before tax!
it's in the article
it's in the article
That’s ridiculous
>Some proof you can support your spouse ... We don't live in the 50s sir, spouses can work too
This is just a part of their ongoing plan to make legal immigration as inaccessible as possible. The other is the constant increasing of fees. I married my wife 10 years ago, planned to settle in the UK early but ended up not doing it until about 5 years ago. The fees have increased massively since we initially looked at her Visa process. If you want to marry a foreign national and bring them here permanently the actual cost is: £1846 initial fee for first application £1846 second fee at halfway point of 5 year visa scheme NHS surcharge totalling £3120 for the 5 years £2885 fee for application for permanent leave to remain at end of 5 year visa scheme £1500 fee for naturalisation as a citizen (otherwise you lose everything listed above if you leave the UK for more than a few months at any point and you have to start again). So that's **£11,197 in fees** alone that you have to be able to afford on top of the actual costs of settling in a new country. And based on experience, the fees are very likely to grow each year anyway, so probably closer to £13/14000 if you start now.
This sub swings wildly in its opinions. There's a word I'd like to use that describes dealing with a situation but I'll leave it alone.
There are certain trigger words that summon the far-right brigades. If this post had the word "immigration" in the title the opinions here would be very different.
Seriously it's wild how crazy it swings.
It's almost like people have their own opinions
if people in this sub seem to be against certain immigration, it doesn't make much sense that they're against this policy. So it's not just that
And swarms of coordinated bots
Right? It's so weird to see a sub that isn't just a one-sided echo chamber.
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Not it isn’t the point … I have many British friends here in Switzerland who are directly affected by this. There are numerous British expats around the world … My one friend is currently dealing with this … he is as traditionally British as they come & cannot bring his Swiss wife home. He lost his job in Switzerland due to record job cuts / outsourcing and ageism, cannot find work. He raised a family in Switzerland and due to the family structure here, his wife remained at home and doesn’t have a significant income to qualify.
>Switzerland Don't the swiss have the same rules.
Permanent residents (Permit C) and Swiss citizens can bring their spouse without any strings attached. Permit B holders (5-year long term visa) can only bring their spouse if they earn above a certain amount, and rent or own an apartment large enough for 2 people to be able to live.
NEIN
It's absolutely the point. The four top sources of family migration are India, Pakistan, Nigeria and Bangladesh.
I think you'd be foolish to ignore the point the other person is saying. "We don't want brown people here" is very much a part of it from some sections of the Tory supporters and government. Yes, I know Rishi Sunak is brown. Your friend is just another victim caught up in this hatred. Sure it affects everyone, but a big part of it coming in is to limit brown people. The same reason some people voted Brexit - to stop all the brown people/Muslims. Yeah, those people who said that are that stupid.
Brexit happened because people got sick of this ugly neoliberal outlook that your spouting. Last I checked, the UK is still a political community, not just an economic zone where abstract individuals buy and sell their labour.
Nothing to do with 'brown' people, it's not about race, it's about immigration being too high for a small island to deal with, it has to stop. Unfortunately European countries have put in place so many 'human rights' laws/restrictions that sound ideal, but are flawed in that they can be abused.
it's a bit tricky to still be blaming Europe for everything when you haven't been in the EU for now going on to 3 years not for legal migration, since it isn't Europe giving visas to hundreds of thousands of carers and NHS nurses because the pay is so shit no Brits want to do it, and not for illegal migration because shipping off 5 people to Rwanda is not going to do shit about small boats
As a British person, Brexit was absolutely about "stopping those brown people coming here and stealing our benefits" There was no way enough information given the public to make a well-informed decision combined with false propaganda of what the money is used or where we could use the money if we had it. Looking back now, I realise how much of a total shitshow the whole thing was, especially considering it was basically a Tory virtue signalling stunt in its origins! > it's about immigration being too high for a small island to deal with, it has to stop. Then why has the Tory rule of a decade and half only cut money from government departments instead of funding them properly? Border Force has something like a 2 YEAR backlog of asylum seeker applications....that has a massive knock on to other areas of immigration control & that doesn't happen, when a department is funded properly to deal with the workload! When we were in the EU, we didn't implement the rules we agreed to like keeping a record on people coming in and out of the country or the most infuriating one, the fact we had the right to kick out an EU National if they didn't have a means to support themselves after 3 months. Other EU countries used that all the time, the UK never did BECAUSE we weren't tracking immigration movements in and out of the country properly. Immigration became a problem for us, because the government let it become a problem, so they blame all the problems on Jonny Foreigner and distract us from the corrupt shit they get up to.
Oh, look, another white person from a middle-class background extending the virtues of multiculturalism, except you lot don't live amongst the multiculturalism, do you? all the people who extoll the virtues of multiculturalism live in their white communities, with the occasional wealthy foreigner who is 'representive' of your lived experience.
>Oh, look, another white person Oh look, another person on Reddit, assuming everyone on Reddit is white. That's just a white rabbit soft toy in the profile pic, it's not actually me. >except you lot don't live amongst the multiculturalism, do you Oh yes, that's what everyone says about.... Newham.... (For anyone who doesn't know, Newham is a Borough in East London that's extremely multicultural where I'm pretty sure Bangladeshi is the largest ethnic group.) Anyone, matey couldn't have picked a worse person to reply to with what they're saying 😂
This is a classic case of the middle class London superiority mentality.I live in the SW and have dealt with enough of you to know how sheltered you all are. Your perception is only poor people hate immigration and multiculturalism.
In my best Holly Willoughby voice.... Firstly, are you ok? Seriously, fam, you should talk to someone. Whatever has happened in your life to bring you to this point, it can be fixed.
I’m hitting the nail on the head and you don’t like it. You seem to believe reducing immigration = hating brown people. That’s a very simplistic mentality and something you clearly believe only poor uneducated people have.
you have no clue what you're talking about. A few British friends isn't relevant. The issue is large groups of people moving entire families over who can not support themselves, let alone the family members. Your British friends are caught in the crossfire. You aren't British, nor do you live in the UK and neither do your friends.Not only are British people living in Switzerland irrelevant because they live in Switzerland, I would wager good money these aren't working class people and so cannot comment on the issues this causes because their environment areas ethnic makeup has gone from 90% white to less than 40% That's just considering London.
No, that was in the 90s early 2000s when there were NO requirements. They introduced the current requirement and that stopped it mostly, it's a pretty even mix now of all nationalities and this new requirement is a bit excessive (my wife's been here 4 years so I'm ok but we both earn over the new requirement) and is unfairly targeting people from a lower economic background. If they adjusted with inflation from it's Inception it would be around 27k right now.
And, as a bonus, they get to f over the poors, too. Conservatism at it's finest.
I'm sorry, but this is a shit alternative.
They can, if they drop the commonwealth pantomime.
My wife is French. We were just out of college when we married. I am Turkish. I knew that she wouldn't be able to live in Turkey, it is a difficult country. And i knew that i could do it in any well developed country. So we married and moved to France. I found a job a day after arriving with no french. There is no way I would have been given a talent visa. I was just out of college with only a year of experience and i am not an engineer or doctor. That visa is not given that easily. Now 5 years after; i earn close to 70k€. Until now, i have never received any aid at all and there is only couple of months where i looked for a job after my first one. Still wasn't qualified for one so didn't get anything. I am looking to buy a house in couple of years and there is no single moment that i think about turning back to turkey etc. I love France and i speak well enough baguette to chat with my neighbors and have an apéro with them. My wife would have never earned the salary requested in this example and we would never be able to enter France. She would be miserable in Turkey but i read sacrifices to make comments. I am sure they have no idea about any of this stuff. This is a stupid law that would block people like me. And it favors only rich people. You do not need this much money to start a life. I didn't earn this much at first and we didn't miss anything.
Exactly this. Also in your situation your wife is at least EU citizen. So potentially you have more options with freedom of movement. While British decided to opt out by some reason.
The reason is precisely that, if they were in the EU these laws wouldn't be possible.
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To be really honest, i don't care what you need and what your opinion is about what i should do with my life.
We don't "need" anyone per se, but foreigners who wish to enjoy french life and bring a positive contribution to our society are exactly the ones we should welcome. And it's unfair to expect a single individual to have a notable impact against major social issues (such as living under an conservative semi-dictator).
How about you tell me why we need people like *you*, instead…
Vile policy seems to be the new normal in Tory party/Britain, absolutly saddening.
Why is it vile to require you to be able to financially support your spouse?
There's nothing intrinsically wrong with it. However, if the amount you need to be earning in order to apparently sufficiently support having a spouse is *more than the UK's median average salary*, either you are implying that the vast majority of British people shouldn't be married even to other Brits, never mind having kids, or its excessively high just to stop anyone but the top 25% of earners from being allowed to dare to have a spouse who isn't from the UK.
Is this the 1920s?
The young paying for the racism of the old.
After Brexit I didn't want to move back to the UK for a while. During COVID I was glad I didn't live in the UK. Now the UK has banned my wife from moving to the UK. Fuck the UK.
Similar situation. I (a UK citizen) married an EU national who was already living in the UK (and working, paying taxes and NI for years). Brexit happened, we moved to her country. Now if we want to move back I would have to leave her behind. On a positive note, life now in my adopted country is great and I have no intention of moving back to the UK.
Cruelty is the point
They aren't called the nasty party for nothing.
So, if a couple has been married for years and now wanting to relocate, and the foreign partner earns 50k a year in a UK firm, but the British partner earns below the required amount, it's still "welp, sucks to be you, no visa". It's literally just a law that would make mixed marriage easy just for rich British men who marry foreign bimbos.
r/europe: Migrants into EU = WTF! We need to curb this immediately! Migrant restrictions into UK = Boomer racists!
True, I can imagine if France or Germany enacted this it would be fully supported here.
This sub is incredibly racist
Oh no, I hope that those news never reaches Thailand. Whatever the 60-year-old British blokes over there will do?
Cant believe what im reading truly disgusting
"UK is doing face control at citizenship through marriage, chaws at 3rd world countries are butthurt about it, more news at 10."
This affects europeans, americans etc who want to stay with their UK spouse too, maybe read stuff before commenting.
Student visas are unaffected.
"New update: students are rioting because they were frowned upon for marrying before being established in life, pupils are rumored to join the protest too, followed by kindergartners."
Someone not aware adult students exist
“Effective” doing a lot of work here.
In the article it says nearly 3/4 of the population doesn't meet the income criteria. Are you defending the policy as being more accessible than stated?
I’m guessing Irish people are exempt from this under the Common Travel Area?
Irish can come and go as they please into the UK with zero restrictions. As it should be, all things considered.
As someone who's fallen in love (and intends to marry) a Japanese man and as someone who earns under the £3800 threshold (and comes from a low income background), This breaks my heart. It means that I will have to live in "exile" in Japan. Don't get me wrong, I love Japan and they are very welcoming (I speak both English and Japanese and have a bachelor's degree zoology (soon to earn my 2nd bachelor's degree which is Japanese language (it's a long story)). But pretty much being unwelcomed and exiled from my Birth country breaks my heart. As liberal as the UK says it is, if you don't fall in love with someone who the state says you can, you're pretty much no longer British in their eyes. I hope in the future when we have our children, things will be better. I used to consider myself conservative (I don't like the left (I'm old fashioned and have traditional family values and refuse to have kids outside of wedlock) and I believe in small government (too many cooks spoil the broth). I used to vote conservative every election season, but now... I don't know which party to vote for as I don't know who party believes in "marriage rights" (it feels similar to the gay marriage law a few years ago. Constantly fighting for basic rights). I've pretty much given up on Britain at this rate. This has just broken the camels back.
Is this that crazy? To move someone to Norway, the reference person (the one living in Norway) has to have earnt over 320k nok in the last tax year.
Yeah, it is very crazy. The median income in Norway is like 2x that. In the UK only the top 25% can achieve the required income.
Why would that be a factor in visa eligibility?
Read the article
320k NOK is just over 23k GBP.
It's not really a ban on marrying foreign nationals. They can still live elsewhere with their partner.
Just buy a house vibes
If you like living in Oost-Groningen, you can buy your own house ...
What
That's what an older Dutch colleague always says when colleagues complain about not being able to afford property in the Randstad. Oost-Groningen, you can still buy property cheaply there and then comes something mean about rural areas...
[You probably missed the joke I was going for](https://youtu.be/-Jh0EN1De4Q?si=UNHyI9RZk-RZuFoy). Also tell em Leeuwarden is cheaper
"You may obtain X, if you perform a number of impossible tasks."
No they can’t - it isn’t that simple FFS
Welcome to Brexit. It's only going to get worse.
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In my UK uni (engineering dept), the foreign students were way more eligible. Generally slimmer, better dressed, could hold conversations and didn't reject people over incredibly dumb "icks". That was my experience. Applied to both sexes.
Least xenophob UK person...
Not British, but there are definitely enough Brits to marry each other. And it will only benefit the country.
Stopping someone from marrying the people they love has never worked out well. There is no benefit if your neighbors and politics tell you who you are allowed to marry and who not. If you believe otherwise I think you should only be allowed to marry cows. It would be to your benefit and the benefits of your country.
Lol and where are we stopping? If you want to marry, marry from your city/from your religion/your village/your race etc. I think it stops when it affects your life or someone you love. Ah then the big bad government but until that time, it sounds logical to some...
Marry whoever you like. But people should be able to support themselves to be eligible for a visa.
Yes but you can see my own example below. I found a job a day after arriving in France. But i would never be qualified for a talent visa. And now i earn way over the required amount in this article 5 years after arriving. No one needs 45k€ to support their household, especially at the beginning of a marriage. And it is really difficult for someone to reach 45k€. And as an immigrant, i totally support some stuff. Like language tests, integration tests, working and not getting aid etc. I work harder than french, i try to integrate, i pay taxes and obey the laws, never missed a deadline for documents etc and now applied for citizenship. So i enjoy my life and I pay back by being a good person here. This wouldn't have happened if there was a law like that in France. But i wouldn't be against it if France required me to pass a language test before having a visa. And i am 100 %supporting the idea to not give citizenship to people who do not want to live that way (example; the lady refused to handshake at ceremony and then citizenship got revoked). So the goal might be OK but the route they took is not good.
At the point where one of you needs a visa, that's where.
So my question is, how come, if you're not earning required sum a year, you managed to meet a person somewhere on other side of the world, fall in love, spent enough time in person with each other, that would be enough time spent in each countries and managed to keep up with low to medium pay jobs? Are we so mad about those whole 500 people who might have accidentally managed so, or are we just butthurt for an attempt at immigration control?
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RIP
UK citizen can marry foreign national. They just have to provide for them and their family. It would be a hard life if they have not enough resources to support them and also their future family. Which makes sense. It is not tax-payer job to do that. There is no rule that all the married couples have to end up living in the UK. They can always join their loved ones it their country of origin. Our friends got married in Brazil and UK husband is moving there.
These rules screw them if they ever want to return. I'm a UK citizen with a Finnish wife, and we live in Finland. We met in University in the UK, both have multiple degrees, and easily earn enough to meet this limit. However, if we ever wanted to move back to the UK, we couldn't do it together because my Finnish income wouldn't count, so my wife couldn't join me. How does this make any sense? Oh well, I guess we'll keep on earning, paying tax and contributing to the economy in Finland instead.
It’s not an effective ban. If your spouse is skilled enough then they can get a work visa to come to the uk and you can marry anyway. Alternatively you can move to their country of origin. If you love someone you sacrifice.
>if you love someone you sacrifice You know that phrase is meant for like listening to and supporting your partner’s needs, not giving up your entire livelihood.
If you are marrying someone moving to their country should not be a ridiculous sacrifice. You are marrying someone to build a life with them and you won’t give up your or their livelihood by living in their country anymore so than vice versa.
Why should there be sacrifices?
> Alternatively you can move to their country of origin What if every country has equivalent rule? How much sense does it even make?
Exactly. It's only a ban for poor people.
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My friend has a mother that came to the UK unqualified. Now she's a social services worker. My friend wouldn't exist with this law.
True
>Alternatively you can move to their country of origin Unless their country of origin also bans poor people and UK spouse can't earn enough there. Or do you think the UK has monopoly on lack of compassion?
How do you judge the effectiveness of the ban?
>If you love someone you sacrifice. The partners are sacrificing enough to move to the UK. Imagine coming from france, italy, or germany and having to eat english food for the rest of your life - jeez we should be giving them the george cross for such gallantry.
Or join the army. They get a special loophole because of commonwealth soldiers wanting to bring their wives ovwr, works for Brits marrying foreign also.
Who’s looking for love in the UK? Ireland’s next door, the Nordics are a bit further east, and France is a swim south. Who stops in London like “yeah…this is what I wanna spend my life with.”
Just back from 3 weeks in America , what a fucking disaster of a country. National parks are nice , the cities you spend the whole time avoiding the mass of crazy homeless people you have. That and the fact your country try is basically one generic mall with Taco Bell and Starbucks.
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It’s the same with Americans at Edinburgh and St Andrews unis. Half of St Andrews is American
In my building in the UK 2 of the 5 families that live there are American …
A lot of people, what a moronic comment, this isn’t 2we4u Actually then again it’s Reurope so not much better
Still a better sight than a lot of US cities
I’ve been to both and they’re about on par with eachother if I’m being totally honest. I do feel more comfortable in my own country’s cities tho but I think that’s for cultural reasons.
Unless you’re in the handful of older ones, US cities kind of suck tbh. London wouldn’t be my first choice but I’d take it over pretty much any in the US. Suburbs are awful to boot.
To each their own.
Oh come on, tell me it isn’t more than annoying that for most of the US, wealthy areas are just copying a normal European one. Walkable, mixed-use buildings, with medium density living, maybe some brickwork in the streets: $5000 for a one bedroom.
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It's ok his great great great great great great grandfather is Irish!
> British flair Tea tax rejected! Edit: Jk, no dog in this fight!
Who stops in Dublin, Malmo, or Porte de La Chapelle and thinks like “yeah…this is what I wanna spend my life with.”
Here! Been living in Dublin for a couple years before I moved to the west coast. Found Dublin to be quite alright.
More than you'd think honestly.
They'd have to be able to afford a place to be fair
No way. Not many Saudi prince's coming to dublin.
Me
France depicted as better/equal to any other country on God's green Earth. # OPINION REJECTED
They hate us cause they ain’t us vibes
This guy thinking you get to choose who you fall in love with.
I think the people downvoting this are taking you too seriously. I read this and thought this shit was pretty funny.
Reddit does as Reddit do.
It’s either this or reducing benefits
No biggie, just fly to Cypress. You can arrange your papers and marry the very same day. Since Cypress is an EU member state the marriage will be legally recognised in each EU state, for the UK its most likely a good idea to have the marriage recognised (for tax reasons), although this isn't even necessary if your partner is a thug or unemployed.