A RECENTLY-MARRIED St Andrews University graduate fears he could be thrown out of the country when he returns from honeymoon next month following a radical shake-up of UK immigration rules.
Daniel Whiteley (23), an American national from York, Pennsylvania, said he was “insulted” to discover that, despite marrying a Scottish woman and contributing thousands of pounds to the St Andrews economy for more than four years, he could be barred from the UK when he and wife Jenny return from South Africa on January 16.
Daniel and Jenny got engaged in 2010 and graduated, in astrophysics and management respectively, from St Andrews University last summer.
They left Scotland to travel and married in Wolseley, South Africa, in October. Daniel’s student visa expired the same month.
Previously he would have been able to return to Great Britain as he is married to a UK citizen. However, following changes to immigration rules, which now insist on a minimum income threshold of £18,600 for a British citizen or settled person to bring a non-European Economic Area spouse or partner to live in the UK, they are now not sure if Daniel will be allowed back into Scotland.
Despite both having career ambitions in the St Andrews area, they now feel they have little option than to settle in the USA.
Speaking from Zambia, Daniel said: “I feel that, based on my behaviour while I was in the UK, what is happening to my wife and I is a great injustice.
“We both contributed so much to the UK economy while at university and I cannot understand why we are the type of people the UK wants to get rid of.
“During our four years in the UK we each spent £16,000 on accommodation, each paid £5,000 in taxes and national insurance, and I paid £70,000 to attend university.
“How a couple who has given £112,000 to the UK economy before the age of 23 can be excluded based on financial grounds is beyond me.
“I called the UK my home and was looking forward to returning in January to start a life and business.”
Jenny (23), from Livingston, said: “It is extremely distressing to not be able to return home to live where we once lived. We are choosing to move to America together, where I can enter, stay and work on a specific visa while a green card is approved.
“The new laws make me extremely angry at the sweeping generalisations they have put over everyone, excluding many newly-married young couples because, due to our age and experience, there is an inability to have large savings of money or well-paying jobs in the current climate.
“Even if we could get the savings or a well-paying job for myself we would still have to live apart until the time limit was exceeded, because there is no option for Dan to be in the UK and change his immigration status.
“We did not marry for convenience, a visa, or to abuse the UK benefits we married for love.”
The couple researched immigration law before their marriage but say they did not know the laws had changed until they went to the British embassy in Lusaka, Zambia, last Friday. It was then that Daniel was told he would not be allowed back into the UK.
He said: “Everyone we have spoken to in immigration refuses to help us because according to them we don’t ‘live’ in the UK, but neither will the Lusaka embassy because we don’t live here either.
“We do intend to fly back to the UK on January 16, hoping that we can talk to a real human at immigration in Glasgow, where our flight lands, and deal with the issue there.
“If we are unable to solve the problem there we will get a 30-day tourist visa for me and we will spend the next month getting Jenny a visa to America, packing up our things and getting the inoculations and papers to move our cats to my parents’ home in York, Pennsylvania.”
No one from the Home Office was available for comment.
malexander@thecourier.co.uk