Strangled by red tape

My FAMILy have found ourselves in a situation which is causing us huge emotional, financial and physical hardship.

I arrived in the UK in July, but my wife and son are stranded in New Zealand. My wife Jocelyn and I are both 52. I am a British citizen, born here, and my wife is a New Zealand citizen who lived here for more than 20 years, had a successful career with IBM and qualifies for a full UK pension.

In 2006, we moved to New Zealand after my wife’s mother died and her father needed support. We settled there and enjoyed life. We wanted a family but time was against us and it was not to be.

so we applied to adopt a child and, to our delight, our wishes came true in 2012 when Gene, a five-year-old boy came into our lives. All went well — we were a family.

Gene enjoyed being in a family and was curious about my relatives, far away in the UK. After lengthy discussions, we decided to move back to the UK to give our boy a chance to meet the shureys.

We had to get the New Zealand family court’s permission to take Gene out of the country, and this was lengthy, expensive and stressful, but we eventually got it and set the wheels in motion to come back to the UK.

to make the move smooth for our little boy, we bought a UK home before our move, I sold my business and booked our flights.

I got a job offer and a start date. However, British immigration laws changed in 2012, so anyone bringing a foreign spouse into the UK had to meet very strict criteria and, unfortunately, we fall outside those criteria.

As I had sold my business, I can’t show adequate earnings for the year leading up to my arrival here, and we can’t show adequate savings as we put all our money into our UK home so my wife does not qualify for a visa.

I now live alone in our family home, having to support two homes as my wife can’t work. I haven’t seen my family for ten weeks and my immigration lawyer says they won’t be in the country before March 2016.

All this is breaking our hearts. My British citizenship and heritage, and my wife’s 20 years’ here as a productive citizen seem to count for nothing under this system.