1/ Today is the sixth anniversary of the introduction of the minimum income rule for families to live together in the UK. It splits families apart. A few facts from my book Welcome to Britain: amzn.to/3iM34NW
2/ First, though, here’s an infographic we put together for a training course on how the rule works. The first barrier is complexity: it is really hard to understand how it even works. 
3/ Affected families cannot live together in the UK. They either have to split apart, which is unbearably hard, or live together in another country, if they can. And relocating together to EU countries is about to become impossible due to Brexit.
4/ When the rule was introduced, the Home Office estimated in their impact assessment that up to 142,000 families would be affected by 2020. But the government went ahead anyway.
5/ The Children’s Commissioner assessment in 2015 was that 15k children were already being separated from one of their parents by the rule. By 2020 that would be 40k children. How can this *possibly* be sensible public policy?
6/ Politicians have never really said what they expect affected families to do. Perhaps they hoped it would deter British citizens from marrying foreigners in the first place. But it doesn’t. People fall in love. Sometimes with foreigners.
7/ Officials at the Home Office say in their visa refusal letters that a separated parent can stay in touch with children by “modern means of communication”. We all know from lockdown that Skype and Zoom are no substitute for a hug.
8/ It is time to #ScrapMIRnow. You can see an open letter to Boris Johnson about the rule signed by over 900 people, including me, here: independent.co.uk/voices/letters…
Follow @ReuniteDivFamil, who are doing some great campaigning work on this and co-ordinated the letter.
