The emotional impact on families has been huge (Picture: Raquel Roberts Dos Santos)

‘They’ve taken the ground from underneath my feet and destroyed my hope. I’m distraught. The repercussions on people’s lives is not human.’

That was the reaction from Raquel Roberts de Santos – a British mother-of-two who, for over four years, has tried to be reunited here in the UK with her Brazilian husband, Manoel, who is also the father of their two children.

Raquel met her husband almost 15 years ago when she was living in Brazil and they’ve been married for over eight years.

After a series of dangerous events there, they decided that Raquel and the boys – now aged five and six – should return to Britain while Manoel and his 14-year-old daughter stayed in Brazil until they could be reunited safely in the UK.

Unfortunately, she’s one of the many people in the UK who just had their hopes dashed, with a loved one essentially being locked out of this country.

Earlier this week, the Government left families all over the UK devastated after it raised the minimum threshold for a family visa to £38,700 to ‘ensure people only bring dependants whom they can support financially’.

For those whom the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI) and Reunite Families UK support, the distress is palpable – people across the country have found that their path to reunification has been destroyed in one fell swoop.

In 2012, the Government introduced a Minimum Income Requirement (MIR), which meant that a British spouse had to earn £18,600 in order to sponsor their partner to come to the UK – irrespective of whether they have children or not.

Raquel and her husband have been married eight years but are now separated (Picture: Raquel Roberts Dos Santos)

This was a level high enough to price-out thousands of people – particularly women, and even more particularly women with caring responsibilities. It was brought in as a way to lower net migration figures at any cost.

In recent months, the Government has come up with migration policy ideas that range from outlandish and unworkable to downright cruel, mostly targeting people who’ve had to flee their homes and seek sanctuary here – like the Rwanda plan ruled unlawful by the Supreme Court, but which the Government is still pursuing.

Now, with these latest proposals to come into effect from Spring next year, it’s families that are caught in the crosshairs.

People often do a double take when they hear about our country’s rules for families. 

Essentially, they say this: if you happen to fall in love with someone from outside the UK, you’d better hope you’re in a stable, well-paying job – otherwise you face years of separation, or having to leave your home in the UK to be with them.

Thousands of people were already suffering because of this rule. 

The emotional impact of being told by your own government that you can’t live with the person you love because you don’t earn enough money is hard to quantify. We’ve worked with people – often families with children – who have been separated for years because of this.

For Raquel, being forced into single parenting makes every day an uphill challenge, with financial and parental pressures weighing heavily on her. For her sons, not having their dad here means missing out on an important part of their cultural heritage, education, and identity.

They’ve only seen him once since being separated and the impact on their mental health is  distressing.

The oldest son now suffers from separation anxiety and the school believes he is grieving the absence of his daddy. As for the youngest, Raquel says it’s a ticking time bomb because she knows he’s holding back to protect her from hurting. 

Across the country, children are growing up without one of their parents, for the simple reason that their family isn’t deemed wealthy enough by the state. Now, this price tag on love has shot up.

The average salary across the UK in 2023 was around £35,464. This means that most of us wouldn’t be able to navigate the Home Office’s cruel and complex rules to start a life with a loved one from outside the UK.

This means that only around 40% of UK full-time employees could afford to support a dependent. 

These rules aren’t just aggressively classist and anti-family – they are, and always have been, explicitly racist and sexist, too.

The Home Office’s own assessment, written in 2012 before this rule was brought in, shows that the Government has known from the start that these rules would hurt people – but more specifically, that it would hurt some more than others.

Being forced into single parenthood has been an uphill struggle (Picture: Raquel Roberts Dos Santos)

It found that, for example, while white British men on average earned above £18,600, men from Pakistani and Bangladeshi backgrounds earned well below that amount. When combined, women of all backgrounds also earned far less than the amount needed to sponsor their partner.

This obvious discrimination – the fact that people of some genders and ethnicities are statistically far less able to live in the UK with the person of their choosing – was found in the assessment to be ‘proportionate’. In other words, we know these rules are racist and sexist, but we’ve decided it’s OK.

By more than doubling the threshold now, the Home Office is showing exactly who it’s happy to target in order to win votes when we go to the polls next year.

Something else is hidden in this approach: its capacity to undermine the mental health of the people – children in particular – who are going through the process at the moment.

In a forthcoming survey conducted by Reunite Families UK as part of their research on the mental health impact of the spouse visa policy, 65% of respondents said that their child had received a diagnosis of a mental health condition.

This latest attack on the basic human right of a family life for so many comes less than two months after the Government announced an increase in visa fees of up to 35% and of the Immigration Health Surcharge of 66%.

This means that, to be reunited in the UK with your partner and child currently abroad – on the standard five-year route to settlement – they will have to pay over £20,000 before you get permanent status. Breaking this down, they’ll each pay nearly £2,000 in application fees – twice – close to £10,000 in order to access healthcare, and then nearly £3,000 each to apply for permanent settlement. 

This announcement is just the latest in a long line of anti-migrant policies being wheeled out by the Government. We must reject each and every one of these attacks.

Underlying this all is the myth that immigration is bad for this country, when the opposite is true. Our nation is built on immigrants. Our economy, culture, and communities are enhanced because of immigration.

People move and have always moved – whether for work, safety, or love. The right to welcome others is what makes us who we are, and we must fight to defend it. 

The Government needs to change course immediately, and not only halt the minimum threshold increase but scrap the MIR altogether.

Families like Raquel’s must be reunited – so their children can grow up knowing that their family matters, no matter how much money they have.

Mary Atkinson is the Campaigns and Networks Manager at Joint Council for the Welfare for Immigrants, while Caroline Coombs is the Chief Executive Officer of Reunite Families UK 

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Raquel met her husband almost 15 years ago when she was living in Brazil and they’ve been married for over eight years – but he’s been separated from her and their two children.