we-are-knight:

thebibliosphere:

vultureculturecoyote:

The reason I hate this royal wedding is personal…

I know a lot of people can’t stand this stupid royal wedding nonsense, but for me this really is sickening to watch. Prince Harry gets to marry his Canadian finance while my partner and I have been separated by immigration laws for 4 years and counting. Never allowed to marry or even LIVE TOGETHER IN THE SAME COUNTRY.

What makes their situation any different from ours? Money.

In order for me to immigrate with my British partner he is required to me making an income of over £18,900 per year. (Which might seem reasonable to americans but Only 14% of British citizens make enough money to meet the spouse immigration requirements!)

Of course, because the royal family are wealthy nobility they can bypass any immigration requirements and live happily ever after, while tens of thousands of families are separated by the insane financial requirements of British marriage immigration visas.

I don’t mean to “reblog beg” but it would really help if you reblogged this to get this information out there. One of the reasons these visa restrictions are still in place is because people aren’t even aware they exist.

These restrictions were brought into place less than six months before ETD and I were due to be married (5 years ago now) and we were told our spousal visa would be denied because I didn’t make enough money to support him. We had to completely change our wedding plans, as well as our life plans.

At the time I was earning over 16k a year with over 10k in savings, well over the UK minimum wage. But that, I was told, was not a “living wage” therefore I could not sponsor my partner, whom I had been with for 7 years, regardless of him already having paying work lined up. I have friends and family in the UK whose entire families are expected to live in less than 9k a year, but the govt deems that acceptable.

They deem a lot of things acceptable. Provided they only happen to the vulnerable and poor.

Also the people in the comments sneering about how the average UK minimum wage is 20k and if you’re not lazy and work hard you can earn more: fuck you that’s not how that works and you know it.

16k was what I earned working full AND freelance work. And I worked damn fucking hard for it, 12 hours a day. That you are priveledge and lucky enough to have a job that pays you over minimum wage, does not negate the fact that a large portion of the country, particularly the North, are not and are surviving thanks to food banks and charity run organizations.

So instead of looking down on people and sneering that maybe people should just “work harder”, maybe you should self examine why you’re so invested in supporting a system that never wants to see you rise higher than “just enough to Survive” and vilifies those who cannot.

Same here, honestly.

Knight and Beguiler are limited by the EXACT same restrictions above.
Basically, unless I can afford to move to London in the near future and get some half-decent job there, things are bleak. That or work two jobs or more, which in the UK is not a common occurrence.

I’m trying whatever I can to meet the requirements, but the system is rigged in favour of those in the wealthiest parts of the UK, and naturally, the Royal Family get an automatic pass. 

It’s also absurd because it does not count the partner’s income AT ALL. Your foreign partner’s income has NO BEARING on the financial requirement, it’s all in the hands of the UK citizen to meet an income requirement set up decades ago, and that has been ruled as “fair in spirit”.