The current financial requirements, which require a UK based sponsor to show an annual income of £18,600 before he or she can sponsor a partner from overseas, were brought in on 09 July 2012, and have been the cause of much controversy since. Challenged successfully in the High Court, who ruled that the requirement was unlawful, the Home Office reacted by taking the matter to the Court of Appeal, meanwhile putting all applications that did not meet the financial requirements on hold – in March 2014, this was some 3,641.
In July 2014 the Court of Appeal ruled in favour of the Home Office, and all the applications that were on hold, and any others where the financial requirements were not met, in precisely the way that the Immigration Rules specify, were refused and have continued to be refused. Now, 10 months after that judgement, comes a glimmer of hope – the case is to go before the Supreme Court. No date has been set as yet, and it is likely to be many months before the matter is heard, and some months after that before a judgement is released. Meanwhile the financial requirements stand as they are, but there is, somewhere at the end of a very long tunnel, a glimmer of hope ….
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