The Archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols, has condemned the Government's pursuit of immigration targets as "inhumane" and “a clear injustice” and warned that rules preventing foreign spouses of UK citizens from settling here were damaging the development of thousands of British children.
Archbishop Nichols, writing in today’s Guardian, urged the Government to change a policy introduced last summer that prevents British citizens living with spouses who come from outside the European Union unless the British spouse can show an annual income of at least £18,600 – almost one and a half times the minimum wage.
He wrote: "The Government's intention with these new regulations is to cut the number of immigrants from outside the European Union. But in doing so, is it the Government's intention to penalise British citizens? To undermine marriages and to split up families?”
The Archbishop said he held a meeting with a group of British passport-holders affected by the ruling and they “were so traumatised that at times they found it difficult to speak”.
The Home Office estimates that the new rules will break up as many as 17,800 families. Nichols noted that a “hidden consequence” of them was that hundreds of British children are separated for an indefinite period from a parent unable to live in Britain.
Pointing out that the Government “claims” to be supportive of marriage and the family, the archbishop went on: “Anyone truly concerned for the family as the building block of society, and realistic about the mobility of British people today, must see both the folly of this policy and how it is an affront to the status of British citizenship.”
Nichols said he hoped that Parliament would correct this “clear injustice” as they continue to consider a new immigration bill that has reached the committee stage in the Commons.
A spokeswoman for the Home Office told the Guardian the measures on foreign spouses were necessary to prevent a family becoming a burden on the taxpayer and to promote integration.
The archbishop made similar remarks in May at a Mass for migrants held in Westminster Cathedral.
Above: Archbishop Nichols and others attending a Mass for migrants in May hold an Eritrean flag outside Westminster Cathedral.
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