Keep Families Together

Following a change in immigration rules in 2012, a valid, genuine, and even long-standing marriage to a British citizen is no longer considered grounds to allow families to live together in the UK. Nor is having children who are British citizens.

Lulu and India Tanik, British citizens aged 3 and 5, have been seeing their father only intermittently since April 2012. He has stayed with them occasionally on a visitors' visa. Lulu was less than a year old when she came to the UK with her British mother. She learned to walk and talk without her father; she started nursery with only Mummy to hold her hand; and she has just recently begun swimming lessons with only one parent at the poolside. Her father hasn't read to her at night, helped with the first bike ride, or even seen her in her school uniform.

Reconsider this discriminatory law which keeps families apart.

Allow the same rights for British citizens as the government recognises for European citizens, who can live in the UK with non-EU spouses. Citizens of all of the EU countries, as well as Switzerland, can live and work in the UK with a spouse and/or children from anywhere in the world. This right is denied by the UK to its own citizens.

It is time for the Home Office to rethink this law, and allow the families of British citizens to live together.