'I should be able to live with my wife': families divided by UK visa rules
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Version 0 of 1. Since 2012, British men and women with spouses from outside the EU must earn more than £18,600 to be allowed to live together in the UK, or more if they have children. The law means those earning the minimum wage could never afford to marry a non-EU husband or wife, and campaigners estimate 43% of the UK population are too poor to fall in love with anyone from outside Europe. Critics say the law, which will be challenged at the supreme court on Monday, creates many single-parent families – especially women with small children – unable to take up full-time work because of childcare costs, and disproportionately affects people living outside London and the south-east, where salaries tend to be lower. Ahead of the hearing, three families split apart by the law tell their stories of separation. ‘The bard of Glastonbury is leaving Glastonbury - how many other people at the heart of their local communities have been uprooted?’ Poet Wes White is the 10th bard of Glastonbury, an honorary position in the Somerset town where he has lived for most of his life, and where he also works part-time in the local library. But within the next few months he will pack up his robes and pen and move to London, as it is the only option he has found to secure a better-paying job that would allow his American wife Erica Viola to join him in the UK. “The bard of Glastonbury is leaving Glastonbury because of these rules,” he said. “How many other people with roles at the heart of their local communities have been uprooted because of them? “Even if I was full-time, it would be shy of the income threshold. I do think it’s amazing that you can have a role which is paid for by local government and it’s still not enough for you to be with your own family.” He met Viola on a band forum online 16 years ago, and later in person at a Manic Street Preachers concert in the UK in 2002. The relationship was a slow burner, but they spontaneously agreed to chat on Skype in 2011 and that was the clincher. “It seemed more real, it wasn’t going on in each other’s head,” White said. It was the same lightning bolt for Viola: “Seeing him again after all those years made everything really intense and I knew that obviously it was going to be tough, but I wanted to be with him and no one else, no matter how many visas or oceans it took.” The pair got engaged in 2012, but a week later, the rule on minimum income came into force. White said they initially thought they could overcome the difficulties of the threshold, but he struggled to find a better paid job in Glastonbury. I do feel as though I’m being punished, and Wes in particular is being punished because he couldn’t find an English wife They were married in May 2013, in a vineyard in Viola’s native Nebraska. A couple’s marital status does not have an effect on the income threshold rules but marriage was something they wanted anyway, Viola said. “We’ve already waited 11 years, even if you are going to be 5,000 miles away I still wanted to be your wife.’” Moving to the US would have its own difficulties, but both say they would prefer to be in the UK. “For me, it’s partly become a point of principle, I should be able to live in my own country with my own wife,” White said. “If they can encourage British people to leave the country, it’s minus one on the migration target. To feel like your marriage is part of that statistic feels very dehumanising.” Like many couples in his situation, White said friends and family found it extremely difficult to understand. “People look at you like you’re mad, it’s an alienating experience. My grandma thinks I should just be able to write Erica’s name in my passport and she’ll be here next week.” “I do feel as though I’m being punished,” Viola said, “and Wes in particular is being punished because he couldn’t find an English wife!” With White’s new job in the capital, Viola hopes to come to the UK as early as the summer. He hopes to still pursue his poetry, and has even written one about Theresa May. “There’s already a bard in the London borough I’m moving to so we’ll have to see what happens with that!” ‘Every time the phone rings, he thinks it’s his dad – he thinks he lives in the computer’ Precious Depasse, a student at the School of Oriental and African Studies (Soas) in London, was studying Swahili in her year abroad in Zanzibar when she fell in love with Tanzanian Max el-Amry after a night playing pool in a bar with friends. The couple now have a son, Marley, but Amry has never been granted permission to come to the UK to visit his 18-month-old son, with their only contact being on holidays to Dubai. “What’s so frustrating is that I’m young and I haven’t had a chance to start our life together, everything is on hold,” Depasse said. “And I’m treated like this by my own country.” Depasse wanted to give birth near her family in Solihull, West Midlands, and they initially planned to have Amry, a hotel manager, come to the UK on a visitor’s visa so he could be by his girlfriend’s side. “It was denied twice, they believed he would not return home, despite having a job to return to. “We found out afterwards that it’s very rare to get a visitor’s visa if you have a partner and child here, they just don’t believe you’ll leave. I gave up on the hope that he would witness his son being born and I gave birth without him.” Four months later, she brought Marley to meet his dad in Dubai, and the couple have met abroad whenever they can afford to. “My son has only spent a total of four weeks with his father and he’s almost 18 months old,” she said. “[When we’re there] it’s more like a holiday, it’s not real life. We’re in a hotel, going out to eat. I want a normal life, doing normal things together.” The rules on minimum income came in shortly after the couple had decided to apply for a spousal visa. Depasse is still studying and has a place on the Teach First programme for September, but fears it may not pay enough to meet the minimum. “I’ll have to earn the wage for six months, Marley will be nearly four by then,” she said. “Every time the phone rings, he thinks it’s his dad – he thinks he lives in the computer. Depasse said she is reluctant to leave the UK because of the close relationship she has with her family and the help they give her. “He’s in a very different situation, his dad has remarried, his mum lives abroad and he’s pretty much by himself. It makes sense to come here,” she said. “The income rules are a very simplistic way to solve what is quite a small problem of people abusing the rules,” she said. “Some days you feel so angry, other times it’s just really upsetting. I didn’t really have a clue about the rules, you hear so much about immigration and how easy it is for everyone to get into the country and it isn’t true at all, I never thought how big a problem it would be.” ‘We feel like we’re being kicked out of our own country, because her dad’s not welcome here’ Even though Kelly McDermott’s partner, Christos Uta Pailodze, is more than 2,600 miles away in Georgia in eastern Europe, he is always in their east London living room. When McDermott is home with the couple’s four-year-old daughter, Sophia, they turn on the computer, place it on the sofa, and Pailodze is waiting on Skype. “A lot of couples in the UK they don’t see each other or talk to each other as much as we do,” McDermott said. “We try to bond with Sophia as much as possible, so they’ll play Pictionary on Skype, they make up games to play.” She met Pailodze while working a summer bar job each year on the Greek island of Kos. They met three years before they started dating in 2010. A year later, she fell pregnant with Sophia and the couple decided to start a life in Britain. I can’t help with what the baby wants, with anything. I can’t describe how that feels “That’s when everything sort of went downhill, really,” she said. An application for a visitor’s visa for Pailodze to be there at his daughter’s birth was declined, and the new thresholds for income came in a month after Sophia was born. “Friends say ‘why don’t you just get married?’, and that’s the point – it doesn’t solve anything,” she said. McDermott now works part-time as a retail assistant, but says even on a full-time wage she would not earn enough. She is a single parent, dependent on housing benefit, when she would prefer not to have to rely on the taxpayer. “You hear the phrase ‘burden on the taxpayer’ [in relation to spousal visas], and in our current situation, to all intents and purposes that’s what we are because I’m a single parent, I can only work part-time,” she said. “If he was here, we wouldn’t have access to public funds anyway, because you’re not allowed to, but also we would both work and contribute like all other British families, we’d share the childcare.” Pailodze says he feels frustrated he cannot help his partner earn a living or share the childcare. “I felt guilty she was alone, like every day,” he said. “I can’t help with what the baby wants, with anything. I can’t describe how that feels.” McDermott and Sophia travel to Georgia or Turkey twice a year to meet Pailodze, which costs the large chunks of what the couple can afford to save. “People don’t know how I do it, we have to live so tightly, to afford to go and see her dad.” With no prospect of their circumstances changing, the couple have decided their only way of being together is for McDermott to leave England, and they plan to move back to Kos in the spring, where they first met. “That is what we’re going to have to do, up and leave everything Sophia’s ever known,” she said. “We feel we’re being kicked out really, because her dad’s not welcome here. It’s terrifying, it’s not sunk in yet, but if this is the only way we’ve got, we have to do it.” |