Our Contemptible Government

Today is my wedding anniversary. All jokes aside about the perils of forgetting it, this one is actually a hugely significant one. Two years ago today we became Mr and Mrs Masterton but in so doing plunged headlong into a world of bureacracy and state-sponsored extortion whose only purpose it seems is to penalise us to the limits of our personal resources for wanting to spend our lives together.

Sound dramatic? You may disagree when you hear how the process works. Despite what some people will have you believe, the government are indeed taking steps to deal with what some clearly perceive as a problem with excessive immigration. What you may not realise is that in a strange feat of twisted logic, they are making it harder and harder to come to this country legitimately and above board, actions which of course only serve to make the more illegal routes more attractive and viable.

In the summer of 2005 we decided to get married. Before we could do so, we had to apply for official government permission, due to Mila's status as a non-EU citizen. This involved filling in a form with all our personal details, enclosing passports, proof of earnings and proof of address and a non too insignificant fee of £120. Duly scrutinised by some Home Office drone, they concluded that our wish to get married was a legitimate one (we had after all been co-habiting for a year and a half) and In return for this, we received a certificate. Thus we could go to the local registry office and pay the usual fees for wanting to be married, handing in the certificate as we did so.

Had we decided to get married in church, this certificate would not have been necessary, Church Of England priests apparently being able to identify bogus marriages more effectively than anyone else. This strange anomaly in the rules led to the process being declared illegal early in 2006, a ruling the government is still appealing pitifully. In the meantime my chances of getting a refund for having my human rights breached are nil.

So we got married in September 2005 and subsequently applied for Mila to remain in the country as my wife, her existing student visa being set to run out at the end of that year. When she first arrived in the country the fee for this was similarly a not too unreasonable £120, rising to over £300 if you wished to take advantage of a same day premium service. Sadly by the time we came to apply, it was decided that jacking the fees up was a sensible way of deterring applications and so it had risen to £350 for the postal service and over £700 for the premium fast-track.

We of course had little choice but to pay, and so sent the form off complete with passports, marriage certificate and proofs of address and earnings (much the same information you will note that we submitted two months earlier when applying to be married in the first place). These earnings were of course £350 less than they would have been, so the honeymoon had to be put on hold.

We also noted that this leave to remain was for a two year probationary period, at the end of which if we were still living together as husband and wife we could apply for it to become permanent (or "indefinite" as they term it). As a result since then we have been collecting bills and official documents, all designed to show that we live under the same roof, as well as budgeting for the £350 we would be required to pay for the second submission of the form in 2007.

Welcome to 2007, where the qualifying period is up. Mila's residence permit runs out in one month and it is now time to submit our collection of documents on the appropriate form. Except that in the intervening period the rules have changed once more. The infamous "Life In The UK" test that was advertised as being for people wishing to become citizens is apparently now also a requirement for people simply wishing to become resident.

Passing this actually is no big deal, having lived here for three years most of it is common sense. Nonetheless there are certain parts of the test that defy logic and can only be known through rote learning of certain statistics. How many British people do you know who can tell you what proportion of the UK population is Bangladeshi in origin? This however is a fact that can come up in the exam and which must be learned. Go figure. Fee for this is a rather steep but not too unreasonable £34. I'm sure driving tests are more expensive.

Once this has been passed we can send off the form, but on downloading it we discovered that the fee for processing has risen once again. For the privilege of being married to my wife and living with her in this country, the country where she has investments, friends, a job and a life, I must find the astonishing sum of £750. Or if we prefer £900 for a same-day service. That's right. In the space of two years the cost of being married to a foreign citizen has risen over 100%. This is of course neither proportionate, reasonable or just. Whichever way you spin it, this is legalised robbery on a breathtaking scale and I have absolutely no choice but to go along with it. Better yet, Mila's existing passport will run out in a year and we will need to apply to transfer the Leave To Remain document to the new one. All for the perfectly reasonable fee of £160. Essentially I'm going to fork out £1000 over the next 12 months for the privilege of being married.

Actually no, not quite. We could apply for full British citizenship, as spouses of Britons need only to have been resident in the country for three years to qualify, as opposed to the five years for everyone else. In applying for this, we only have to send proofs of identity and marriage as well as passing the exam. None of this "same address for two years" business thank goodness. Best of all, the fee for this is just £650. Yes, you read that correctly. It is cheaper to apply for a British passport and all the rights this carries with it (abode in the EU, voting, state benefits etc.) than it is to apply to be a permanent visitor under the flag of another nation. Work that out if you can.

This isn't an issue which will ever gain or lose votes (save mine, which you can guarantee is not going to go to this shower of idiots if indeed it ever was before), nor will It ever become widespread scandal thanks to the limited number of people it affects. Nonetheless as someone who is affected, at a very personal level I can't help but feel betrayed, exploited and cheated by a government which is attempting to solve a problem of its own making by punishing me for the misfortune of falling in love with a beautiful lady from another part of the world. I've no wish to break the law, but for those who have less scruples, the prospect of paying £80 to Dodgy Dave down the pub for a knock-off passport is suddenly a much more viable way forward. All these extortionate fees do is penalise the law abiding and the honest and persuade many more to hide underground. On every conceivable level, the policy is wrong.