Letter: Global Britain needs more humane immigration rules

Camilla Cavendish (“The immigration mess is a nightmare for both the Tories and Labour”, Opinion, FT.com, June 8) accurately describes British immigration policy but her survey misses key features relating not just to economics, but to considerations of justice and humanity.

These include the situation of British citizens with non-British families. “Global Britain” stands out for its apparent hostility to citizens with transnational ties — exemplified by its treatment of foreign spouses of UK citizens.

Witness the government’s recent decision to raise the minimum income requirement for family visas from £18,600 to £38,700 (by 2025). This measure, implicitly condoned by Labour, will deny tens of thousands of British citizens the right to family life in their own country. Many now face invidious choices, for example between life with a foreign spouse outside Britain and caring for elderly family members in Britain.

Meanwhile, the culture of hostility licenses official incompetence. In 2021-22, I was an academic visitor at UCL in London. My Japanese wife applied for a visa as “spouse accompanying a visiting academic”, only to be told that “your husband is a British citizen and not a visiting academic”. Since I needed no visa myself (being British), my wife was deemed ineligible for the “accompanying” visa. Had I been Japanese, Vietnamese, or any other variety of visa-applying foreigner, there would have been no problem. As it was, no visa existed for which my wife could have applied, and the “hostile environment” deterred officials from exercising any common sense.

In place of a prudently-managed, transparent and humane immigration system, the UK has a total shambles. And those who suffer personally from this include many thousands of the UK’s own citizens — not least those resident overseas. Now, with our right to vote newly restored, some of us have formed a “British Overseas Voters Forum” to demand that UK politicians attend to our concerns (bovf.org.uk).

British FT readers overseas are warmly invited to join us!

Professor Edward Vickers
Kyushu University, Fukuoka, Japan