UK court\\\'s spouse visa ruling to affect Bangladeshis

Bangladesh-origin UK citizens will be in trouble as the United Kingdom Court of Appeal has dismissed a legal challenge to Home Office rules for UK citizens who want their overseas spouses to live with them in Britain. The verdict has cleared the way for a minimum income threshold of 18,600-pound for British citizens bringing foreign spouses to live with them in the country, a move likely to affect tens of thousands of visa applicants from South Asia, including Bangladesh. The appeal court ruling followed a legal challenge by UK home secretary Theresa May to a high court judgment last July, which said the annual £18,600 income threshold was ‘onerous’ and ‘unjustified’. A minimum annual income requirement of £18,600 is expected to hit tens of thousands of visa applicants, including Bangladesh-origin British citizens, who tend to get married in Bangladesh and bring their spouse into the UK as their dependents, a media report said on Saturday. Justice Blake in July last had ruled that the financial requirements amounted to ‘a disproportionate interference with a genuine spousal relationship’ and suggested that a threshold of £13,400, which was more in line with the national minimum wage, would be more appropriate. But, according to a ‘Guardian’ newspaper report, three appeal court judges said that his analysis and conclusion that the income rules breached the human rights of the British husbands, wives or partners was not correct, so the rules were lawful.