SCANDAL OF THE SKYPE FAMILIES
NDER laws introduced in 2012 when Theresa May was home secretary, British citizens applying for a visa for a spouse are required to have an income of at least £ 18,600 per year. At the time, money wasn’t a p roblem.
“I had some savings so we fulfi lled all the fi nancial requirements,” he says. “So when her visa was rejected we were very surprised. The reason the offi cer gave was they didn’t believe Annie showed suffi cient evidence of wishing to return to the Philippines because she didn’t have any property in her name.”
Perplexed, Tom spent another £ 5,000 applying for a second time, as well as buying some land in the Philippines. Again they were rejected. “By this time the process had taken four months – and we’re newly married, we wanted to be together, we were like: for God’s sake, what’s going on?” he says.
By the time their third application was rejected, Tom had spent nearly £ 20,000 on fees and collecting the necessary evidence to prove they were a genuine couple.
“The third rejection also said that I no longer had the fi nancial capability to look after my family!” he says. “We’d spent six months on this during which time I’d been unemployed, so it was eating into my savings. And then there’s the cost of all the applications and fees.”
Desperately missing his wife and child, “and just too disillusioned with the Government”, Tom spent the last of his money moving to the Philippines where they bought a farm and tried to forge a new life. But after a series of misadventures, including their house being destroyed by a typhoon and the theft of their livestock by gangsters, the couple were left penniless. Broke and desperate, Tom returned to the UK alone.
“Without those three rejections our lives would have been so different,” he says. “All they had to do was let her visit. I wanted her to meet my family – and then we’d fl y off to our next dream job and all would be lovely. Instead we’re in this horrible situation.”
Tom and Annie are now forced to communicate by Skype and Facebook Messenger as he once again tries to petition for her visa. “This has been the worst time of my life,” he says.
For Gillian Thies, immigration laws have been similarly infl exible. When she and American doctor husband Patrick moved back to Britain in 2016 after 19 years in the US, their two adopted sons Ben and Edward, then 13 and 11, were denied entry to the country.
“My husband had a visa to work for the NHS and my youngest son has dual nationality, but the other two were adopted and it seems the laws are different for adopted children,” she says.
Immigration offi cials at Heathrow not only stopped the boys, Gillian says they even booked them a fl ight back to America – most extraordinarily, without any provision for what they were to do when they got there.
“They were prepared to just send them off alone,” she says. “They were 13 and 11 – how could they let children of that age do that by themselves?”
Eventually, the family secured a lawyer and managed to get sixmonth visitor visas for Ben and Edward – but when they applied for full residency they were once again rejected. The letter informing them of the decision gave the helpful advice to continue their ( transatlantic) family life via “modern communication channels”.
Gillian is still astounded that the Home Offi ce should consider a Skype call an effective way of maintaining a relationship with your children. “It’s ridiculous,” she says. “Obviously that’s not how you live a family life.”
The Thies family managed to get the judgment overturned after going public with their case. The day they were featured on the BBC, says Gillian, she got an email asking: “Which visa would you like?”
She remains furious that the situation ever arose at all. “There are so many massive abuses here,” she says. “They were just children. Daily Express Friday May 25 2018 What’s the security risk? The attitude was: deny them entry, send them away and then it’s not our problem any more. I want an apology from Theresa May. The whole thing is absolutely outrageous. I don’t know anybody who thinks it’s right to deport children.”
FHome Offi ce rules mean thousands of couples and their children are being forced to live apart with traumatic consequences for all concerned
OR Tom Shelton, however, the agony continues. Now struggling even to meet the minimum income required for a visa for his wife and child, let alone the £ 5,000 application fee, he confesses he can’t see a way to be with his family.
“I’m separated from Annie and Dandan by this minimum income requirement and the hostile Home Offi ce attitude,” he says. “I’m convinced they’re trying to fi nd reasons to reject non- EU spouses purely to keep immigration numbers down and hit targets.
“Dandan is just a little lad, he has just turned six and I missed his birthday. We talked over Messenger and that was it. I’ve got my fouryear wedding anniversary coming up on June 7 and I’m going to miss that too.
“Everyone has a right to a family life – and that’s being denied us.”