LONDON: The United Kingdom’s Court of Appeal has dismissed a legal challenge to Home Office rules for UK citizens who want their overseas spouses to live with them in Britain. 

The visa applications of 3,641 families have been on hold since 5 July last year while the appeal court ruled on the legality of a new Home Office minimum income threshold of £18,600 for sponsoring a foreign spouse. 

The appeal court ruling is expected to clear the way for the Home Office to refuse most of those applications. 

Following this verdict, thousands of Bangladeshis, who are living in Britain, will not be able to take their spouse in UK as their yearly income is below £18,600.   

Campaigners say that many thousands more families who were put off from applying by the £18,600 income threshold since it was introduced in 2012 will also be affected. 

They say that the families who remain separated include British citizens in full-time employment on the minimum wage who are too poor to enjoy the right to a family life.  

The appeal court ruling followed a legal challenge by the home secretary, Theresa May, to a high court judgment last July, which said the £18,600 was "onerous" and "unjustified". Justice Blake then ruled that the financial requirements amounted to "a disproportionate interference with a genuine spousal relationship" and suggested that a threshold of £13,400, which was more in line with the national minimum wage, would be more appropriate.

But the three appeal court judges said that his analysis and conclusion that the income rules breached the human rights of the British husbands, wives or partners was not correct, so the rules were lawful.

The case was brought on behalf of two British citizens, Abdul Majid and Shabana Javed, who both live in Birmingham and a refugee, MM, who has the right to remain in Britain, who are married to spouses who live outside Europe.      

Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI), a platform of immigrants in UK is protesting the new law terming its inhuman.

Many Bangladeshi families have fallen in trouble by the new family visa law. They are living separately in Bangladesh and Britain.

Bangladesh Welfare Association General Secretary Nurul Islam said, “We want to give marry our children with all family and relatives as per the custom. But for the new visa law we can’t think to give marry our child in Bangladesh. This is sheer discrimination to ethnic community.”

BDST: 1245 HRS, JUL 12, 2014