The UK Supreme Court recently ruled in MM v SSHD, finding that the UK government could legitimately deny entry to a British citizen’s spouse if the citizen didn’t have enough money to support them. This same policy is the reason that parents of 15,000 British children are not allowed to live in the UK with their kids.
Three legal scholars analyse the decision in Britol’s law school blog, closing with this sharp observation:
Family and spousal migration is only one part of migration policy, and there is the broader issue of what values migration policy should serve generally. In recent political argument in the UK, three sets of voices have been prominent, virtually to the exclusion of all others. First, the proverbial “taxpayer”, the net contributor to government spending. Second, the needs of “business” for skilled and not-so-skilled workers. Third, the “legitimate concerns” of so-called “ordinary people”, constructed as the “white working-class” worried about cultural and demographic change. Largely absent from the discussion have been the autonomy interests that all citizens have in being able to have a valuable set of life-choices available to them, about being able to live, work and settle where they wish, and in being able to make their life with a partner of their choice and maybe start a family. Rather, those interests – that ought to be of central political concern for a liberal society – have been crowded out of the migration debate. This has meant that many of our fellow citizens and their partners have been thwarted in their pursuit of central life goals or forced to pursue those aims through compliance with arcane rules and at the mercy of an unfathomable bureaucracy. If we aspire to the values of a liberal society – as is the official consensus position of all major political parties – our policies ought to reflect them.
The UK’s spousal and family visa regime: some reflections after the Supreme Court judgment in the MM case
[Christopher Bertram, Devyani Prabhat and Helena Wray/University of Bristol Law School Blog]
(via Crooked Timber)
(Image: Children at New York Foundling)
