Dogwash

Theresa May's proposals for tightening up on spousal visas have inevitably attracted the wrath of the Righteous. Ian Birrell's supercilious CiF rant attracts in the nearly 700 comments below the line a fascinating litany of sob stories. Whether or not the general image presented there rings true, of tearful loving couples torn apart as the non-UK spouse or "partner" is manhandled into a cattle truck to be carried off to the gas chambers deported or refused long-term settlement, that I cannot say. I suspect that in practice ways will be found to mitigate any genuine hardship.

But these folk do have something of a point. Mrs May's earnings-based criteria are remarkably crude instruments which address the actual issue only indirectly and incidentally, and many unintended cases are likely to get caught up by them. Curiously, commenter Ben2 comes closest to articulating the underlying contradiction the most clearly,

It's a small minded policy that because they can't be openly racist and say 'this only applies to spouses coming from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh' means that if you want to marry someone from one of the 180 countries that are not in the EU, and you aren't in the top 30% of earners (and if one of you is pregnant then the amount of money the UK citizen needs to earn to continue living here goes up) then you really aren't welcome here anymore.

though being himself firmly in the Righteous camp, he fails to draw the obvious conclusion.

As Ben2 rightly perceives, the problem targeted by Mrs May is the use of arranged marriages among South Asian "communities" as an immigration path into the UK for members of the extended family or clan. These are not the love matches described by CiF's below-the-line commentariat; they are alliances designed for the perceived broader good of the clan. This is not part of current British culture and is not what was intended by the humanitarian family reunion provisions of the 1971 Act, which set out to put an end to large-scale Commonwealth immigration.

One can't blame the South Asian communities for taking advantage of this loophole to benefit their families; in their position I would be tempted to do the same. But the demographic and cultural impact is unacceptable. The South Asian demographic, particularly the Muslim demographic, in the UK is rising inexorably and frighteningly rapidly. Integration with and eventually assimilation into the host community is held back as South Asian community culture is continually refreshed from the homeland. Additionally South Asian communities in the UK are large enough to be self-contained, exacerbating the tendency towards separation.

You might take the happy-clappy liberal "all the same colour under the skin" view of this trend. Me, I'm an Unrighteous racist thug or, to put it another way, a normal human being, and to me it's a process of colonization and ethnic displacement and I want it stopped.

Now given the relatively well-defined nature of this issue, it should be possible for Mrs May to target it pretty accurately. Reimposition of the primary purpose rule might be an effective starting point. Preferably tightened up a bit. The arranged marriage between strangers is not part of current British culture and there is no reason for us to concede to it.

Mrs May's problem is that the anti-racist worldview pervades and dominates our society. The Tories' puzzling desperate need not to be seen as "the nasty party" doesn't help matters either. So explicitly asserting British cultural standards and the interests of the indigenous, or if you prefer, incumbent population is unacceptable. Mrs May is therefore compelled to resort to indirection, instituting plausibly non-discriminatory measures which roughly approximate her actual target.

And as a result of this unfortunately necessary charade, decent Guardianista couples are going to suffer.

Well, I hope you'll forgive an old racist monster if my sympathy is tinged with Schadenfreude.

... so shall ye reap.