The migration advisory committee is due to release a review of the UK’s minimum income requirement for family visas – currently set at £29,000. Many British families are in a state of enforced separation. Family visas represent just 5% of total UK visa applications, yet are a key focus of a migration crackdown. Working with Reunite Families, photographer Frankie Mills documents the lives of nine families whose stories illustrate the human cost of this policy threshold
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hree weeks ago, Keir Starmer said the UK was at risk of becoming an “island of strangers”. But for countless British citizens across the country, that isolation is already a lived reality by design of immigration rules that force them to choose between their homeland and family.
The minimum income requirement dictates how much a person needs to earn in order to bring their non-British partner here. Set at £18,600 for a decade, the Conservatives announced plans to raise it dramatically to £38,700 before backtracking after a public backlash, instead moving it in three gradual stages starting with £29,000 in April last year.
David Kitenda (left) with his children Naomi and Daniel and wife Rebecca. Kitenda says the income threshold has made him feel unwelcome: ‘It feels like another way of stopping people of certain other backgrounds.’
