Salary thresholds for sponsoring dependents proposed
A minimum salary requirement which would need to be met before a UK resident could sponsor a partner or dependent for citizenship has been proposed by the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC).If the proposal is brought into effect it would mean that a UK resident or citizen would need to have a minimum salary of between £18,600 and £25,700 (before tax) in order to sponsor someone for a visa ‘in order to prevent [them] from becoming a burden on the state’. For those wishing to bring in a wife and two children, the minimum threshold would be set between £24,800 and £47,600.
These changes would apply to all UK residents and citizens, including people born in the country. Recent precedent has seen every recommendation made by the MAC accepted in full by the UKBA.
The thresholds are based on eligibility for state benefits and the point at which a family contributes at least as much to the public finances as it receives in services.
Under the current rules the threshold is an annual income of £13,700 before tax. Including tax and housing costs this becomes £5,500, or £105.95 a week. The proposed minimum of between £18,600 to £25,700 would represent an increase of between 35.5% to 88%.
A salary threshold of £18,600 would reduce settlement through the family route by 45 per cent, the MAC estimates. A minimum of £25,700 would reduce it by 63 per cent.
The Guardian newspaper notes that, ‘the largest group of people banned from coming to Britain under the proposal would be women from India, Pakistan, Nepal and Bangladesh. Although the US ranks third in the list of countries of origin of family visas, it is thought most sponsors would qualify under the new salary thresholds.’
The MAC were asked by the government to consider what such a minimum income threshold should be in order to ensure the partner or dependent could be supported by the sponsor. This request is part of the government’s current review of family migration routes and high-profile commitment to reduce immigration to ‘tens of thousands’.
Chairman of the MAC, Professor David Metcalf CBE, said:
‘The current threshold of £5,500 seems low considering the government’s desire to ensure new migrants settling in the UK are not a burden on the state.
‘The MAC recognises that family migration regulations are not determined by economic factors alone. But it is an economic issue – required family income – that we have been asked to address/’
‘Our analysis suggests that, based on only economic criteria, there is a case for such a benchmark.’
How will the threshold be decided?
The wide range for a new threshold takes in to account the different ways the government can choose to benchmark the required salary. There are various different options:
- The threshold will be based on national minimum wages or living wages
- The threshold will be benchmarked against gross annual pay, for instance based on the salary of the 25th percentile of the working population. This means the salary earned by the lower-middle earners in the UK, based on the number of people in the working population, not their salary.
- The threshold will be benchmarked against gross annual pay, for instance based on the salary of the 50th percentile of the working population, decided in the same way as above.
- The threshold will be based costs and contributions to the state benefits systems.
These different methods lead to a different recommendation for the new threshold. It would be prudent to plan for the government to choose a prescriptive threshold at the higher end of the proposed range.
You can find details of the proposal, including how these various new thresholds are calculated and what they mean in the MAC’s report, Analysis of the Points Based System Review of the minimum income requirement for sponsorship under the family migration route (PDF, 885KB).
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