Last week, soaking wet and waiting for a friend at Great Portland Street station, I got a message from my mum saying that the government are introducing English tests for non-EU nationals wanting to join their spouses in the UK. Panicked, I looked up the story on my phone. "I believe being able to speak English should be a prerequisite for anyone who wants to settle here," Theresa May stated. But it was when I read the words "it is a privilege to come to the UK, and that is why I am committed to raising the bar for migrants" that I felt myself starting to cry.
In November 2008 I met the man who, to my surprise, turned out to be the love of my life. I was sitting on the floor at a party, probably slightly tipsy, probably chatting about something inconsequential to someone I recognised, when a tall, skinny man with a mess of curly black hair and extraordinary cheekbones came and sat on the wicker chair next to me, and said nothing. I spent the next three hours or so haranguing this quiet, bony man about what he was thinking and what kind of music he played on the accordion, and within eight months we were married.
That night was the beginning of a love story so improbably wonderful and correct that it took me a while to believe it was happening. I had found the other piece of me. It was also the beginning of one of the toughest periods of my adult life, because as soon as Basel and I got married, we parted, and have lived apart ever since.
Basel is Palestinian and lives in Syria, where I was studying when we met. After our wedding last summer I moved back to the UK to complete my degree, thinking he would join me soon afterwards. However after three months of waiting, we learned that his visa application had been refused because although, as a student, I was financially supported by my family, I wasn't earning a wage. In February we made a new application, and are still waiting to hear the outcome. We have now been living apart for almost a year.
The reason I got teary about coming to the UK being called a "privilege", is that throughout this whole ordeal, my right to be with my husband has been ignored. Contrary to what most people think, bringing a non-EU spouse to the UK is already very difficult. Seemingly reasonable criteria regarding income and housing are pedantically applied in an effort to, as the nice lady from immigration advisory service told me, "discourage foreign marriages". I proved that I had sufficient regular income, but this was rejected because it was from a third party. I proved that I had adequate accommodation, but this was rejected because I hadn't had an expensive inspection done on the property.
Requiring non-EU spouses to do a pre-entry English test will only make this painfully long process even longer. It is not just being apart that is difficult, it is the strain of not knowing when or where you will eventually be together. If integration is really the issue, then why not make English lessons mandatory once the spouse arrives in Britain? Extending subsidised English lessons (as Daniel Trilling suggested on Cif) may cost the taxpayer, but so does maintaining such a restrictive immigration system, a fact that no one ever seems to mention.
Such responses to Daniel's article as "a country has the right to choose the type of migrants it wants" lump married couples' pursuit of a life together with economic immigration. The latter may or may not be a "privilege", but the former is a right. I have the right to live in my country with the man I have chosen to marry, and the fact that we speak Arabic together, and that he isn't rich, and doesn't have a university degree, is no one else's business. Basel is learning English, and will do so much more speedily once he is here. I don't know if he would pass Theresa May's English test tomorrow, but I do know that requiring us to jump through yet another hoop will further prolong our unnecessary separation.
I am stunned that it is now seemingly OK to refer to "importing foreign wives/husbands", as if they were cows. I am trying to be with the man I love, and there is nothing foreign about him to me. The simple fact is that if Basel were British or Italian, we would not be apart. Our immigration system punishes people for falling in love outside of the EU, which raises profound questions about a society that claims to be modern, tolerant, and anti-racist.
www.guardian.co.uk
