Immigration Rules: Impact on Families

Lord Kilclooney Excerpts

Thursday 4th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Kilclooney]

My Lords, in the 20 years that I was a Member of the other place, I never had a visa application case to deal with. Of course, that is easily explained. Representing Northern Ireland during the 30 years of the Troubles, I found that no foreigners wanted to come and live in Northern Ireland, so no visas were required. We got the odd foreigner coming up from the Republic of Ireland, but otherwise none at all. How times have changed. Immigration is now a big challenge in Northern Ireland, as it is elsewhere in the United Kingdom. We have tens of thousands of foreign people now living in Northern Ireland, from Lithuania, Poland and especially Portugal.

The report that we have before us today from the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Migration is an excellent publication. All-party groups have had some criticism in the media in recent weeks, especially about staff, access to this building et cetera. However, I think that this is one of the finest examples of work by an all-party parliamentary group. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and her colleagues on the good work of their group, because it is a thorough, detailed and excellent report and certainly enhances the good name of all-party parliamentary groups.

I want to stress several points in the report before I go on to one particular example, without mentioning names. One is the delay in deciding these applications. I know of a case where a visa for a spouse, married to a United Kingdom citizen in Northern Ireland, was applied for in February 2012. The decision was made by the Secretary of State in May 2013—15 months later. That is an intolerable delay for a family unit as they wait to find out whether or not they will be awarded a visa.

On page 23 of the report, a submission from the Belfast Migrant Centre refers to the problem of the minimum income requirement, which is of course uniform throughout the United Kingdom. However, as the centre points out, average wages vary throughout the different regions of the United Kingdom, whether it is Scotland, Wales, the north of England or Northern Ireland. Is it fair to have a standard minimum income requirement when average wages vary in different regions of the United Kingdom?

I know personally the people involved in a case where a girl from Australia, loyal to Her Majesty the Queen, applied for a spouse’s visa. She had been working in the United Kingdom and had a work permit since 2008, five years ago. She is the unit sister of a 38-bed nursing home in Northern Ireland and went back to her home country of Australia in February 2011 to marry a United Kingdom citizen from Northern Ireland. He is from the third generation running a family firm in Northern Ireland, formed in 1975, which now employs 25 people. There is therefore no issue of a minimum income requirement in this case. However, the Secretary of State surprisingly reached the conclusion that she is married to a British citizen—which, of course, is correct—and went on to state in the decision: “As both speak English there are no insurmountable obstacles to both travelling to Australia together—as such your application fails”. It is unbelievable that that could happen. Someone who employs 25 people and who has been living in Northern Ireland for seven or eight years goes back to Australia to get married and is told that the application for a visa to live in the United Kingdom has failed. It is terrible for the married couple and has very adverse implications for a successful family firm.

While thousands of EU citizens flow into all parts of the United Kingdom each year—a net inflow of 200,000 per year, some of whom now probably work in the Home Office assessing visa applications—people from Australia, New Zealand and Canada, subjects loyal to Her Majesty the Queen, are being refused visas. Is it any wonder that support for UKIP is increasing as more and more people realise the implications of the present government policies on immigration and visas? I appeal to the Government to accept the recommendation of the all-party group that the whole procedure needs to be reviewed.