I don't believe it...

I just came across this article in the Huffington post which I think epitomises just how shockingly incompetent and dysfunctional the UKBA really is. Surely anyone capable of treating another human being in such a degrading manner should not be allowed anywhere near a job as an immigration officer.

And while this particular scenario might not be the case for the vast majority of Family Visa applicants, it is the same culture of distrust that is keeping so many genuine applicants out of the country.

While applicants should obviously have to meet a basic level of requirements in order to prove that their case is genuine, this kind of thing really exemplifies the humiliating hoops that both asylum seekers, genuine foreign workers, students and UK CITIZENS have to jump through in order to live in the UK.

Non negotiable...

Today, we finally found out why my husband's initial application for a COS had been unsuccessful and, true to form, the reasoning behind the rejection was borderline farcical!

In order to apply for a COS, a sponsoring company must show that they have completed a resident market labour test. This basically consists of publishing the job advertisement on several specific websites for a certain amount of time (28 days) and then submitting copies of the published advertisements as well as information on the recruitment process (candidate CVs, interview transcripts, etc) to the UKBA....just to show that the foreign candidate (in this case my husband) is the only person qualified for the job.

This was all completed by my husband's company in November. The UKBA then rejected the application in December, claiming that because the company had listed the salary as "negotiable" and not "competitive" in the advertisement published on the Job Centre Plus website (the UK government's official job-hunting website and a compulsory element of the resident market labour test), less British nationals would have applied for the job!

When the company's Head of Recruitment replied that the company had always listed their salaries on Job Centre Plus as "negotiable" as the website didn't, in fact, have a "competitive" category option (wtf?), and that this had never impacted their COS applications previously, the UKBA replied that they had recently updated the Job Centre Plus website to include this category and could the company please now repeat the test!

Again, absolutely no notice whatsoever was given as to the updates to the Job Centre Plus website and the impact that this would have on companies advertising there as part of the resident market labour test.

This has now set my husband's visa application back yet another two months! The new market labour test will be complete by mid-February and the earliest the COS application can be resubmitted is March the 5th.

It is scary how much these small details can push back an application. You really get an insight into just how easy it can be to lose a year or two of your life to the UKBA...

The highly skilled migrant fiasco...

Who would deny a visa to this little face?

After Theresa May's changes to the family visa in July 2012 scuppered our plans to return home at the end of 2012, every spare minute of our time has been taken up with trying to find alternative ways back to the UK.

Fortunately, I'm married to a very clever man (n.b. he reads this and I have absolutely no desire to do the cooking tonight!) who is fully bilingual and very good at what he does...whatever that may be! Ok, well I'm not sure exactly what it is that he does but I do know that its something computery. When he started to apply for jobs in the UK last August, the response was fairly overwhelming. But unfortunately, most of the companies that he spoke to, after discovering that he didn't yet hold a UK visa, simply told him to get in touch as soon as his spouse visa had been issued (When will that be, Ms May?). On the plus side, several other companies were so impressed at his computery skills that they went ahead and interviewed him anyway and one even flew him to England and then offered him a job...a good one, with a visa!

That was in October 2012. It is now almost February 2013 and we're still waiting. Mariano's UK company requested that he be issued with a certificate of sponsorship (COS), which is basically a piece of paper that states that he is qualified for the job and that they can't find anyone else to do it (all true), in November. This was denied (erroneously, according to the company's lawyers) in December and we have been waiting six weeks for the UKBA to review the COS application and issue the certificate since then.

Other than the obvious frustration and heart-ache that this is causing my husband and I... (So near and yet so far) I can't help but wonder on the impact that this utter incompetence on the part of UKBA is having on the British economy, especially in times of economic crisis. If the system worked efficiently, my husband and I could've been in the UK, working and contributing vital tax income (in my husband's case to a higher tax bracket) by November 2012. We also would have been paying bills, forking out well over £1,000 to rent a flat in London, and my utter addiction to Pistachio macaroons would likely be generating hundreds of pounds worth of extra revenue to the Paul's bakery chain!

And that's without taking into consideration the impact that this must be having on the company that wants to hire him...which had been looking for a qualified candidate for over six months!

So not only is the UKBA's utter inefficiency infringing on the human rights of UK citizens (to a family life) but it is also doing its part in helping to cripple the local economy.

Well that makes sense...

This is a chart compiled by a great Facebook group campaigning against the changes to the Family Visa, Unite Families - Fight for Love, and highlights perfectly just how much thought the supremely intelligent and logical Theresa May put into the new rulings!

One of the most frustrating aspects of the new changes is that while UK citizens have to jump through hoops in order to prove their financial eligibility to reside in their country of birth with their non-EU spouses, absolutely anyone with a different European passport (French, Italian, Spanish, Polish...whatever) can bring their non-EU spouses into the UK without having to meet any regulations whatsoever! (they just have to register for a family permit).

So basically, if my husband had married a Spanish lady, he could come to live in the UK with no job, no money and no ability to speak English. He could even claim benefits! He is being discriminated against, by the UK government for having married a UK citizen!

I thought I should also mention that when the couple has been living together abroad, the £18,600 past salary must have been earned by the UK partner alone! This is the stipulation that, in the case of my husband and I, has made it impossible for us to return.

My Story...

My husband and I with our families on our wedding day May 2010

I never could’ve imagined, when I arrived in Buenos Aires over 12 years ago, a young girl of just 20 setting out on her first solo adventure abroad, that I’d remain here today, living a life of forced exile from my native UK.

In 2001, I transferred from University College London to a university in Buenos Aires for the third year of my undergraduate degree in order to write my dissertation on the human rights group, the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo. I adored the city and upon graduation, returned to Argentina to work as a journalist, later working in communications and digital marketing consultancy for international non-profit organisations.

Like many other long-term expats, my reason for remaining so far away from home was simple…I fell in love. I met my husband, Mariano, in early 2005 and we tied the knot just over five years later in May 2010.

While I was happy to remain in Buenos Aires during the first few years of our relationship, when we made the decision to start a family, the reality of my location hit home. One of the things that has most appealed to me about Argentine culture, is the importance placed on family life. But by raising my children in Buenos Aires, thousands of miles away from the vast majority of their extended family, I’d be depriving them of just that.

So at the end of 2011, my husband and I decided to apply for a spouse visa so that we could move back to the UK and settle down before starting our family. We knew that the process of applying for a UK visa would be hard-going but we never could’ve prepared ourselves for the impossible hurdles put in place by Theresa May as part of her revision of the UK Family Visa rulings implemented in July 2012.

Prior to the changes, my husband and I would have had little problem proving our eligibility for a UK spouse visa: We had been living together for over five years and married for two. My husband was educated at a British school in Buenos Aires and speaks English with barely a hint of accent. He works as Senior IT consultant for an international company and had already received significant interest from several UK firms that had asked him to get in touch once his visa had been issued. And just in case things didn’t go as smoothly as we had hoped, we had also been careful to put aside several thousand pounds in savings that would enable us to live in the UK for a year until we found employment.

However, on the 10^th of July 2012, after just over six months spent registering our marriage in the UK, gathering, apostilling and translating the supporting documentation required by UK Border Agency, including the personal photos, emails and letters needed to prove the “validity” of our  marriage, we visited the UKBA website to compile a final checklist, only to discover that just 24 hours earlier, the entire procedure had changed.

The Family Visa, which enabled British citizens to reside in the UK with a non-EU spouse, was previously determined on a case-by-case basis, taking into consideration factors such as employment history, savings, English language level, duration of the relationship, etc. The new rulings however now made it almost impossible for couples currently residing together outside of the UK to obtain visas, with the exception of the most wealthy, of course.

The new requirements stipulate that couples that have been residing together abroad must show that the UK partner has a firm job offer in the UK prior to his/her spouse applying for the visa. They must also show that the UK partner has earned at least £18,600 over the last financial year while residing abroad with their foreign partner.

As a charity worker, I earn an average wage in Argentina but when you convert this to pounds sterling, rather than look at the UK equivalent income, it misses the mark by far. If the UK partner of a couple residing abroad has taken time off to raise a family, the situation is even more hopeless, no matter what their combined family income may be.

Ironically, my husband’s salary does exceed £18,600 but as the family income is disregarded for couples residing abroad, and only the individual income of the UK partner is taken into consideration, we still fail to meet the financial requirements.

While there have been a number of reports on families affected by the changes, most have focused on more controversial cases involving students with no income whatsoever, those on benefits and applicants that have been unable to meet the minimum language requirements. Little attention has been paid to the massive discrimination suffered by professional couples, with the potential to contribute significant tax income to the UK, merely because they are residing together abroad at the time of application.

Undeterred, my husband and I have continued to look for ways back to the UK (without having to endure long periods of separation in order to meet the financial requirements) and, upon receiving a great job offer from a UK company, earning a significant wage, my husband is now awaiting UKBAs response on his sponsorship application. Even so, despite his qualifications, high salary and the fact that he is married to a Brit, there is still no guarantee that his visa application will be successful.

What we do know is that for the time being, we are having to decide between postponing our plans to start a family (in the hope that we’ll eventually find a way to return to the UK) or bringing up our children over 7,000 miles away from 90% of their family. Little did I ever think when I first arrived in Argentina to write about human rights abuses that a decade later, I’d be on the receiving end of similar violations of my rights (to a family life) courtesy of my own government.