U-turn on minimum salary for family visa

The Home Office has made a U-turn on its much criticised plan to imminently raise the minimum salary requirement for British nationals to bring foreign family members to the UK. Instead of imposing a £38,700 requirement now, it says the threshold will first be raised to £29,000.

- Peter Walker

The revised proposal, announced unexpectedly and without fanfare in a parliamentary answer, said the threshold would be increased "incrementally" and would still eventually hit £38,700, but gave no timescale for when this would happen.

U-turn on minimum salary threshold for family visas

The lack of detail, and the suddenness of the policy change, prompted opposition par-2 ties to condemn a lack of consultation, with Labour saying the policy was in "chaos".

While £29,000 remains above the average UK working salary, and is significantly higher than the previous £18,600 minimum, ministers appeared to have at least partly given way to the outpouring of fury over the £38,700 level, announced as part of a wider crackdown on legal migration earlier this month.

Under the £18,600 threshold, 75% of people could have family members join them; if it was set at £38,700, only 40% would be able to, falling to 25% in the north-east of England.

With such visas forming a small proportion of overall legal immigration, the original change was expected to account for only about 10,000 of a planned reduction of 300,000 in annual numbers, while taking a heavy toll on families, many of whom said they would be forced to live apart.