David with his family (Picture: Denis Barlow)
Feeling the vibrations from my ringing mobile, I answered it with a start.
On the other end of the WhatsApp video call was my wife Rebecca. She was in the dim light of the maternity ward and in her arms was our newborn son.
I was overcome with joy and relief that both mum and baby were OK, but I was sad too. Because rather than being at her bedside, I was stuck four thousand miles away in Uganda.
The only reason I missed the birth was because Baby D arrived early and I couldn’t change my booked flight in time.
Yet, this was the second birth of a child I had missed and all because of an impossibly high minimum income requirement (MIR) for a spouse visa, which means I’m forced to live away from my wife and children.
Rebecca and I met in 2011. I was on driving duty with my tours and transport business and she had come to Uganda from the UK as a volunteer to help develop, support and improve child welfare.
From the start I was drawn to her lovely soul and spirituality but we only got to know each other better after I drove her and some friends on a safari to Murchison Falls in Northern Uganda.
She made my heart race and brought me peace all at once and soon after we were an official item.
We got engaged in June of 2013 – the proposal wasn’t overly romantic, I sort of blurted the question out which thankfully didn’t stop her from saying yes – and in September that same year, we made our vows in front of family and friends and started life together in the capital of Uganda, Kampala.
David with his wife on their wedding day (Picture: Denis Barlow)
Then, in 2014, we were thrilled to discover Rebecca was pregnant.
Due to her having specific medical needs, we made the decision early on to have the baby in the UK. It made the most sense but, for me, there was an additional hurdle.
As a foreign national with a British wife, I must apply for a visitor visa every time I wish to visit her or family in the UK. It’s not guaranteed to be approved either.
In fact, just weeks before my wife’s due date, my application was rejected on the basis that the case officer didn’t think I had ‘sufficient ties’ to my home country that would compel me to return to Uganda when my visit ended.
This baffled me.
I had extensive family ties, a place of residence where I had lived for over 10 years and an active business – all which would require me to return. Not to mention I had already returned when a previous visit to the UK ended.
Thankfully, a second application was successful but only after I showed that we had prepared our Uganda home for the arrival of the baby.
However, as a result of this late approval, I actually missed my daughter’s arrival in 2015 by a matter of minutes.
I arrived at the hospital straight from the airport to have my first-born child placed in my arms. Despite this ordeal, it was one of the happiest – if not the happiest – days of my life.
It feels like we’re a bereaved single-parent household where the partner’s ghost sometimes manifests over the phone
Three months after the birth we flew back to Uganda, where we lived together until 2019.
After considering her future education and Rebecca’s prospects for employment and better work-life balance we made the difficult decision for them to move to the UK.
Meanwhile, I would stay in Uganda until we could meet the requirements for the spouse visa.
The day they left was heartbreaking. I tried to remain outwardly cheerful while hugging my wife and four-year-old child goodbye, but inside, I was grieving.
Still we hoped it wouldn’t be long until we were together again – how wrong we were.
The spouse visa application is the procedure by which UK citizens can sponsor their loved ones to come to the country to live with them. To do so – from 2012 – they had to earn and maintain a Minimum Income Requirement (MIR) of at least £18,600 per year, with an even higher sum needed to also sponsor dependent children (for instance a stepchild).
Learning about the process was our first real insight into just how complicated it would be for us to settle as a family in the UK.
Even though Rebecca found employment as a receptionist in a surgery within a couple of months, as my salary is not considered in the application (only the income of the British partner is taken into account) and she only works part time and makes just over minimum wage, meeting the MIR has been near impossible.
David’s daughter (Picture: Chris Tabu)
We’ve been trying to meet the requirements for the spouse visa ever since and the only contact I’ve had with my family has been through fleeting visits to the UK and calls.
When the Covid-19 lockdowns happened in 2020, there was a period of prolonged separation over two years.
The downside of being a visitor to my own family is there is always the cloud of my impending departure hanging over everything we do. It makes it difficult to enjoy the moments.
Spending so much time apart has meant there are many moments I’ve missed and will most likely continue to miss in my children’s formative years.
Things like birthdays, plays and sports days are all milestones passing by. And missing the birth of our son in 2022 is just another example.
I did all I could to support her through the labour of course and spent the night trying to count contractions by using the time between text messages.
This government seems to be suggesting that only the wealthy should fall in love with a foreigner
When my notifications went silent sometime between midnight and 2am Ugandan time, I’d assumed Rebecca had managed to get some sleep and thought I should do the same.
Of course, as we now know, as I dozed off, my wife went into labour proper and was alone with hospital staff when the baby came just before midnight GMT on the night of our ninth wedding anniversary.
If that wasn’t hard enough, our goal of being reunited just got pushed even further away.
The Government announced that the MIR will progressively increase to £38,700 – after initially rising to £29,000 this week. The higher sum is more than the UK national average.
This will make family reunification impossible for a majority of the UK public – including my family.
This government seems to be suggesting that only the wealthy should fall in love with a foreigner – especially if they dare to consider bringing them back to the UK.
The most ideal thing would be for my children to have the love, care, guidance and supervision of both of their parents. But as things stand now, it feels like we’re a bereaved single-parent household where the partner’s ghost sometimes manifests over the phone.
David with his wife (Picture: David Kitenda)
Too many families already lie broken from loss of hope of being reunited. In the most devastating cases, it can result in the complete break-up of marriages.
This is a dire predicament to be in and one I wouldn’t wish on anyone. I’d go as far as to describe it as a tax on love or a type of financial apartheid.
It seems to me that the MIR is a system intent on keeping people apart only instead of racial barriers, we’re facing a financial one.
Our right to family life should not be sacrificed at the altar of short-term political expediency knowing full well that the long-term effect is to have broken families where both adult and child wellbeing suffers.
My children are 9 years and 18 months-old this April. We can’t afford (and I mean this in every sense of the word) to live apart for much longer.
I can only hope that the British Government – whether it’s this one or the next – will eventually see sense and reduce it to allow families like mine to be reunited, permanently.
Until then, we will have to continue as we have with flying visits and WhatsApp video calls to get by.
It’s not the same, of course, but I will cling to the hope that one day, I’ll be able to sweep my family into my arms and never have to say goodbye again.
Sign the petition to call on the Government not to increase the MIR here. Or visit the Reunite Families UK website here.
Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing James.Besanvalle@metro.co.uk.
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