Foreigners

Do you think it should be a right for a married couple to live together in the country of their choice, suzie, and not have artificial barriers put in their way?

I don't think it's a God given right but I do think there should be more equitable employment opportunities throughout the country. I moved a lot for jobs but it was always for promotion and therefore a choice - I think it's different chasing living wage jobs when you are unemployed.

Not only difficult, but impossible. It also depends on whose living wage. Apparently the national living wage is going to go down because of Brexit.
The proper living wage is decided next week, in Living Wage week.

DH worked away for most of our married life, for years it was for months at a time and the 25 years before he retired away all week in various parts of the country!

That is how thousands of people live! Especially if you want the DC not to have to move schools constantly.

Jalima- was that for a very low paid job?

?

Why would it be, Rigby? If the job had been very low paid, why would he have done it?

Thousands (if not millions) of people work away from home and leave their families behind.

It makes sense to work in an area where pay is high and live in an area where rents are low.

The married couple rule seems harsh , but maybe it was brought in to clamp down on sham marriages, which has been a bit of a racket for ages. Not necessarily the most effective way of dealing with that problem.

dd - apologies for not being clear. What I was trying to say, linked to earlier points I made was that people can and of course do move for jobs but that I can't see people moving from areas of high unemployment to my area to do living wage jobs because of housing costs if nothing else so who will do these unskilled jobs if such immigrants who now do them are stopped from coming? Long sentence - sorry again

Also I still think it's a shame if people have to work away from their families

People always have worked away from their families. Its nothing new at all. Accommodation costs are certainly an issue though. It seems to me that economic migrants are more likely to go where there is work and share accommodation costs by living in groups. Not lovely but its a start. My experience of this is that the men (and its always been men) live like that and send their earnings home to Romania or Bangladesh for example.
There's 'foreigners' and 'foreigners' of course. Highly qualified people like doctors and nurses are a different matter and have earnings to reflect that. This enables them to live a more comfortable and settled life and they are more likely to stay permanently. The Polish, Romanian and Bangladeshi people I know are all planning to return 'home' one day.

Rigby, I live in a high housing cost area too. It's not quite London prices (which is why we have Londoners moving here), but it's heading that way. We do have people moving here from across Europe and other parts of the country, although there is no industry, because people have high disposable wealth. Therefore, they are still able to spend money on services, most of which are poorly paid. As I mentioned earlier, they tend to share housing or board. It's classic pull economics.

Nevertheless, I agree with you about the supply of people willing to do low paid jobs. I don't know what will happen.

As for people working away from home, fishermen, sailors, divers, armed forces have always worked away from home. Workers on infrastructure projects, such as roads, almost inevitably have to work away from home, if they want to stay unemployed, because the demand moves, as do IT contractors. I'm sure you remember 'Auf Wiedersehen Pet' or the people who have worked in the Middle Eastern oil fields over the years. I live not that far from Stansted Airport and it's relatively common for business people, scientiosts and researchers to commute to Europe.

I think you have to earn £35 for a spouse to get a visa don't you. Not easy, particularly in poorer areas where people get paid less for equivalent work.

Yes. I know of a young South African couple who were deported along with their baby who was born here as the Dad didn't earn enough. They were both working and total income added up to more than £35k and paid their taxes etc but no, they had to return to SA. Rules are rules etc -except when they're not apparently!

There are very strict rules and great costs to British men who marry a foreign spouse now too - not at all straightford as it was. Some visas cost thousands and only last a couple of years.

£18,600, JessM, according to the article I linked to.

inews.co.uk/opinion/time-stopped-counting-foreign-students-immigrants/

Not a lot but 40% of people earn less than this.

dd - I do understand and know about people whose work takes them away from home but the only point I am trying to make is about non immigrants moving for a living wage job down to my area. I think we agree that is going to be a problem and I don't see any solutions to this.

Thinking about it, that's a whole new theme.
How is it that 40% of UK workers earn less than £18,600?
I find that quite a staggering statistic.

I was talking to Danish family members at the weekend.
They cannot understand how, in a country as rich as ours, we allow there to be such a disparity in wages. They cannot believe how many people get high salaries yet pay the minimum to their workers. There are some very rich people in Denmark, but not that many. It's a much more equal society, even with a conservative government as they have now.

The amount increases if you have children

Oh right. Don't know where I god £35k from. The £18,600 has to be net - as in money going into the bank each month. So you'd have to be earning over £20k gross I guess.

JessM I think the 35k is a minimum that non- Eu workers may eventually have to earn here to stay here?

There's a 67 page document to work out what the income requirements are.
The man in the link is a taxi driver who presumably is paid in cash.
The requirements are that you need bank statement evidence as well as your pay statements. So he would have to put all his pay into the bank to prove what he gets. Can't pay rent in cash or it will not be counted.
I think it's gross, Jess, but difficult to work out as the bit where it tells you is being rebuilt.

Jalima- was that for a very low paid job?

No, he was paid mega-bucks, we are multi-millionaires now.

The amount the young man from SA had to earn was £35k. Don't know how it was worked out. Paperwork nightmare and all appeals failed. Sent back to nothing in SA -no home and no job or chance of one. Not a story that made the newspapers but probably typical of lots of others.

Is that because he was a single man from South Africa?
The £18,600 is for a man or woman born in UK who marries someone from abroad and wants his spouse to live here with him/her.