Re-evaluating family immigration policy: part 1

Should family migration be limited? And what family relationships should be recognised?

Photo by Ekaterina Shakharova on Unsplash

Back in 1995, US academic Hiroshi Motomura published a slightly tongue-in-cheek guide for policy makers designing a family immigration policy: The Family and Immigration: A Roadmap for the Ruritanian Lawmaker (yes, it’s behind an academic paywall, but there’s nothing I can lawfully do about that, sorry!). As I said at the very start of this Substack, I am a big fan of Motomura’s writing. So that article seems like a good place to start.

Family immigration policy questions

Motomura’s article was essentially a comparative study of German and United States immigration policies. In order to make the comparison work and to generalise out the lessons we might learn, he framed the article as a guide to lawmakers from a hypothetical country, Ruritania. Drawing on his work studying German and US policy, he posed these hypothetical law makers ten questions.

You can see Motomura’s original questions in his article. I am going to adopt most of them but merge and adapt some slightly. My version of Motomura’s ten questions reads like this:

1. Will the number of family-based immigrants be limited?

2. Which family relationships will be recognised?

3. In what circumstances will family separation be justified?

4. Will family ties affect the application of exclusion or expulsion grounds?

5. Will citizens be preferred over non-citizens?

6. What categories of non-citizens will be entitled to sponsor family members?

7. What will be the procedures for deciding eligibility?

8. Will informal controls such as delay, cost or complexity be used or tolerated?

9. What rights will family-based immigrants have?

10. How will family-based immigration affect the integration of immigrants into society?

There is quite a bit of overlap between these questions, and answers to some inform answers to others. Because this piece of work has ended up taking so long and is correspondingly long in word count, I’ve decided to break it up. I’m just going to address the first two of these questions here and the other answers will follow later, hopefully in the natural pairings you might detect there.

1. Will the number of family-based immigrants be limited?

A lot turns on the answer to this question. If the answer is “no, no limits should be imposed” then the other questions all fall away. They are all predicated on there being some kind of limit on family migration. The point of all the questions is to explore and interrogate the nature and scope of those limits.

Limits can be ‘hard’ and obvious, as with the imposition of a cap or quota.

Or limits can be ‘soft’ and more subtle. The range of recognised family relationships might be limited. Family separation could be justified on public policy grounds in a wide range of situations. Informal controls such as delays, fees and complexity can be deployed. And so on. These indirect controls on numbers may not impose a hard cap or quota but they do render entry and residence very hard or even impossible for many families and thus reduce the number of family members who can actually enter.

If either form of limitation is considered appropriate, this poses fundamental questions of its own. Like, why?

Is it to reduce overall immigration numbers? Family migration constitutes a very small percentage of the total. Although that might change if restrictions were lifted.

See table Vis_01 in Home Office entry clearance statistics. ‘Family’ here includes family visas for settled migrants and citizens and EUSS family permits.

Or to preserve the existing ethnic or cultural character of the country? That’s racist if it is particular racial groups you have in mind (“we don’t mind Australian family members but we do mind Pakistani ones”).

Or to preserve the public purse? But family members are not admitted for economic reasons, family is about much more than economic value and, anyway, members normally contribute economically directly or indirectly, for example through childcare and by actually having children.

Or for some other reason?

Some countries do impose quotas on the entry of family migrants, at least on some categories of family migrant. As I understand it, Australia and the United States follow this approach. The outcome is very long waits for family members to qualify for entry. Sometimes very long waits lasting decades. Family members die while waiting. And families might well get pretty upset about that, and feel that the policy is unfair and illusory.

The United Kingdom imposes no official cap or quota on family immigration. The idea of a cap or quota on the entry of family members may well seem inhumane and even outlandish here, in fact. Conservative politicians have proposed it, or at least suggested they were proposing it, but when faced with the reality of what it would mean have never implemented it.

We have more subtle restrictions here in the United Kingdom. And we are so inured to them we may no longer see them for what they are.

The current UK approach is arguably a policy erratic from the era of ‘zero immigration’ between the 1960s and 1990s, when primary migration from the ‘new Commonwealth’ had been ended but family migration continued.

Politicians of all parties sought means by which to further and further restrict family migration without imposing a formal cap or ending it entirely. New visas, impossible documentary requirements, sham marriage rules, entry clearance delays of years and the ‘primary purpose’ rule were all deployed. A wider range of non traditional families were recognised over the course of the 2000s but a new series of formal and informal controls were then imposed in the net migration target period. The spouse minimum income rule, effective closure of the adult family member route, new laws and procedures supposedly addressing sham marriages, longer periods to settlement, much higher fees and added complexity have all made life harder for families which include migrants. It is unlikely that any of these measures have actually reduced inward migration very much, though.

We recognise only a narrow range of family relationships, eligibility to act as a sponsor is restricted, we impose myriad informal controls such as fees and complexity and we readily expel those few family members who are admitted.

What if the range of recognised family relationships was widened out? Or eligibility to sponsor family members was widened? At the moment, not all migrants are themselves eligible to sponsor family members, and there has been some controversy about which students should be permitted to bring family with them while they study.

With more family members potentially qualifying for entry, would it be permissible or even desirable to limit their entry by means of a numerical quota? If so, what might we anticipate to be the outcome of such a policy?

Some will feel instinctively that no limits should be placed on family immigration and that a wide range of family relationships should be recognised. If so, we need to recognise that the number of migrants who qualify to enter may increase fairly substantially depending on how that is done. This might well attract political opposition, as we have seen with the families of students recently.

But given these more subtle limits on family immigration prevent many settled migrants and citizens from living full lives and had virtually zero impact on net migration anyway, it is high time to re-evaluate the current approach.

2. Which family relationships will be recognised?

What kind of family members will qualify for family immigration rules? Nuclear family or wider family? If wider family, how wide? Will non-traditional family arrangements be recognised?

The answer to this question depends to some extent on why we consider family immigration to be important. If it is about assisting the integration of the ‘primary’ migrant or enabling them to live a full and happy life, then this would suggest recognition of wider family relationships.

Since reforms in 2012, it is basically only partners and some children who might qualify for entry to the United Kingdom.

Married and unmarried partners are recognised (albeit with a two year minimum residence requirement), as are same sex partners. Arranged marriages are recognised. Polygamous relationships are not recognised. Marriages of convenience entered into only for the purposes of entry are not recognised.

Children only qualify for entry prior to the age of 18 and additional somewhat ambiguous criteria are also applied. The children must not have formed an independent family unit. Children will not generally qualify for entry if one of their parents is alive and remains abroad. In these circumstances, additional criteria apply which make entry difficult in all cases and impossible in many. The rules do not, for example, enable the parents to make choices about what is in the child’s best interests.

Adopted and surrogate children are recognised as qualifying for entry in some fairly narrowly defined circumstances but procedures are cumbersome. This is partly for reasons of child protection and partly because nationality law is pretty complex in this area.

Parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, siblings and so on will find it virtually impossible to gain entry as a family member. There are very narrow exceptional circumstances in which an ‘adult dependant relative’ might qualify but, as we’ve explained at length on Free Movement, these really are very narrow indeed. The immigration statistics speak for themselves, showing that just a few hundred qualify every year.

The reality is that the United Kingdom does restrict family immigration, and quite severely. One of the principle means of so doing is by adopting a very narrow conception of family life in the context of immigration. Blithe comments by politicians about the importance of grandparents and the paramountcy of love do not apply to families which include migrants. Other mechanisms are also deployed, including cost, complexity, a high income requirement, low barriers to family separation on public policy grounds and an arcane application process. I’ll be looking at these issues in later posts.

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That’s is for now. Next time I’ll be trying to address the two questions on family separation and expulsion.