One of Pod Academy’s interns writes:  Last year, the Home Office issued a major clampdown on family migration into the UK. They did this by introducing a £18,600 income threshold, beneath which spouses of UK citizens are unable to become UK residents. This policy has split hundreds, if not thousands, of families apart and threatens to do the same to mine if I do not start earning at least £18,600 a year. I am a young radio journalist in a society that is changing so rapidly that the old definitions of class no longer apply to the majority of people. Under the new definitions, I am a member of the ‘precariat’, someone who goes from one temporary job to another. My situation is particularly precarious as, due to my current job being unsalaried, I am supported entirely by my family.

The irony behind the government’s new immigration policy is that, due to lack of economic growth, thousands of graduates like me are working in unpaid internships. In fact, the government actively encourages internship and apprentice schemes so that graduates can get valuable experience on their CVs. Thus, I am doing exactly what the government wants, apart from marrying a foreigner, of course.

Actually, my crime isn’t marrying a foreigner – it’s being poor and marrying a foreigner that really gets their goat. After all, the government hasn’t been completely unreasonable; as long as you have £65,000 in cash savings in a bank account, you’re fine. Alternatively, as long as you have investments and the revenue from them equals the magical £18,600, then you’re covered. So, I’m not completely buggered; all I need is £65,000 for six months (and the willpower not to spend any of it) or £465,000 to invest, as that will earn me £18,600 at an interest rate of 4%. There is no leeway where the figures are concerned: they have to be spot on. One of the examples of the severity of this rule that’s currently circulating the net is of a British woman who has spent nine and a half years years in the armed forces and is, per month, £17 short of the government’s target, and thus, is unable to live in the UK with her spouse.

The new policy was introduced to reduce two things: firstly, immigration, and secondly, the benefit bill. The truth is that our borders are porous and the government has no real idea how many migrants come unofficially into the country. You can’t monitor people who leave no paper trail. The government can, however, introduce rules to make it harder for those who do have citizenship here because statistics, addresses, phone numbers, etc. actually exist for these people. And the policy is working because government figures reveal that the percentage of people coming in on family visas has dropped by 16% since they introduced the new rules.

Now let’s return to that £18,600 figure, an amount that has to be earned exclusively by the British partner in the marriage. If I were to go and, as Iain Duncan Smith advised a few months ago, stack shelves for the national minimum wage of £6.19 an hour for 48 hours a week for 52 weeks of the year, my total salary would amount to £16,044. The £16,044 figure cannot be topped up by my wife’s salary from being a part-time English teacher, as the income of the foreign spouse isn’t taken into account. Effectively, this policy is a bar on the poor getting married to foreigners. It is particularly unfair on couples when the British partner is the major caregiver of the couple’s children, and in most cases, these caregivers are women. Incidentally, the £18,600 threshold rises to just above £24,000 if the couple has a child.

Soon after we got married over three years ago, my wife and I went through the stressful and expensive process of applying for her temporary residency. We thought that applying for her permanent residency would be simple; after all, we had already supplied all the information they could want. Sadly, this isn’t the case. So, because I refuse to live separately from my partner, I will need to either magically land myself a relatively well-paid job, regardless of whether or not it’s within my ideal career path, or leave the country with her.

There is a ray of hope on the horizon, as this week, the all party parliamentary committee on migration called for a review of this policy. Until now I have never attended a protest demonstration, but I am moved to now because the government have taken away my right to a family life.