As I write this, I haven’t seen my wife for six months. We have been kept apart unlawfully, me here in the UK and her stranded in South Korea, following a Home Office error which saw her denied entry into the UK for ten years. Theresa May’s ‘hostile environment’ immigration policy in action.
Our story is a simple one; I moved to Korea to teach English in 2013, I met my wife there where she worked as a bar manager, and we fell in love. I proposed on a cloudy mountaintop in 2017 and we immediately made plans to start a life together in the UK. It seemed a sensible choice; a life together in a country with better working conditions, higher salaries, a free health service and fresh air. We even went to Seoul’s registry office to marry three months in advance of our planned wedding day, because we knew we would need our marriage certificate early to prepare for her UK visa application.
We quickly became acquainted with the rules, regulations and flaming hoops set by our glorious, Tory-run Home Office. Yet despite the many obstacles piled up in front of my right to bring my foreign spouse to my home, we managed to meet all of the requirements and submitted all of the necessary documents. Everything was double and triple checked and then tied up with ribbons (literally in some cases). Everything from the sincerity of our relationship, my income, my job prospects, my wife’s health and her English ability would be scrutinized. But we weren’t worried, there was no reason we should fail.
I came back to the UK in January, ahead of my wife and while we waited for her visa, so that I could take up work (as is necessary for such an application to be successful) and to set up our first home here. But then in March, inexplicably, an anonymous ‘Entry Clearance Officer’ from the Home Office declared our marriage certificate to be “not valid” and my wife was informed that she would not be allowed entry into the UK for a decade. Bearing in mind I was already in the UK and my wife was all packed up and ready to leave.
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