Last year, the UK Government announced new changes to visas requirements that will be implemented this spring. These requirements are meant to stop as many people moving into the UK since net migration reached a record high in 2022.
To gain a skilled workers visa, you must now earn £38,700 or more per year. Before these changes, you had to earn either £26,200 per year, £10.75 per hour, or whatever the hourly pay for your job was – whichever was highest.
A family visa – also known as a spouse/partner visa – will increase from £18,600 to £29,000 (and eventually around £38,700 within the next couple of years).
Care workers overseas will no longer be allowed to bring their partners or children back to the UK with them.
Image Credit: Pexels
International students have also been impacted by these changes. Plans have been announced to limit the amount of international students who can bring family members with them to the UK, and changes to student visas are expected as the Government reviews this route to prevent people “abusing” it.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak used the first day of the year to back these plans. He tweeted: “From today, the majority of foreign university students cannot bring family members to the UK. In 2024, we’re already delivering for the British people.”
He states that this is for “the British people,” yet many across the UK have signed a petition to stop these visa changes.
A petition map by Unboxed shows that the petition ‘Don’t increase the income requirement for family visas to £38,700’ has more than 38,000 signatures. Interestingly, the places with one of the highest percentage of signatures in Scotland are Orkney and Shetland.
0.126 per cent of constituents in Orkney and Shetland have signed this petition. That’s a lot higher than most of central Scotland, with Stirling only clocking in 0.049 per cent of constituents that signed.
Mathew Nicolson is a Shetlander who met his fiancée Deepa whilst at university in Edinburgh. As Deppa is Malaysian, the couple will be affected by the visa changes.
He commented on why he thinks Shetland showed so much support.
“I think Orkney and Shetland’s numbers are probably mainly because my family and I have been sharing the petition across all of our networks and the overall sample size is small enough for this to show up on the petition map,” he said.
“That said, Orcadians and Shetlanders are generally very welcoming and supportive of migrants who make their lives in the islands, and I can believe that the recently announced immigration rule changes would have very little local support.”
Kirkwall, Orkney. Image Credit: Pexels
Brig asked if a lack of awareness of the petition in other areas could be affecting the amount of signatures.
Mathew said: “I think that’s probably the case. Another problem is that a lot of people have assumed the headlines about a government ‘u-turn’, or ‘climbdown’ means that the policy has been scrapped, which isn’t the case.
“The minimum income requirement for a spouse and family visas will still increase to £29,000 in April and the government still claims to be committed to increasing it to £38,700 in 2025. But there has definitely been a reduction in the number of people signing the petition since the government updated its position, which I think is because many people incorrectly believed the situation has been resolved.”
When talking about the impact that the visa change would have on his community, Mathew talked about how immigration is beneficial to Shetland.
“Shetland, like many of Scotland’s island communities, has an ageing population and is at risk of depopulation this century,” he said.
“Immigration wouldn’t solely fix this problem (housing is a major problem for instance) but removing the rights of most Shetlanders to live with their families if they happen not to be British citizens, forcing Shetlanders in this position to emigrate to their partners’ countries or, in some cases, deporting people from the islands, will only make this demographic problem worse.”
Mathew recounts how open Shetlanders have been with their support for the petition and how locals are opposing the government’s decision:
“There’s been quite a lot of support, including from councillors in Shetland and our MP. I don’t think I’ve seen anyone in Shetland say they support the government’s changes to family visas.”
The petition is still active.
Featured Image Credit: Unsplash
Fourth year student journalist studying Bachelor of Arts with Honours in Journalism Studies.
Words at Brig, The Daily Evergreen, Alloa Advertiser, Discovery Music Scotland, and The Mourning Paper.
