Latest news with #SarahDouglas
The Guardian
11 hours ago
- Business
- The Guardian
British woman laments Brexit rules that would stop her Italian husband moving to UK
A British woman whose family cannot return to the UK because of Brexit visa rules has said she feels 'forgotten and rejected' by the country of her birth. Sarah Douglas moved to Italy to teach English in 2007 before marrying Matteo Ricci, an Italian software developer, in 2010. The couple had always planned to settle in the UK, where Douglas wants to be closer to her parents, who are in their 70s. But under the current, post-Brexit immigration regime, she must earn more than £29,000 and have been working in a job paying that for at least six months in the UK before she can apply for a family visa that would allow her husband to move here, or have £88,500 in cash savings. The rules mean she would have to return to the UK from the family's home in Perugia, Umbria, with their three children – Alba, 13, Mirryn, 10 and Arthur, five – before Ricci could join them. On Tuesday, a review by the migration advisory committee (Mac) raised the hopes of families separated by the rules. The panel suggested ministers could cut the amount a British citizen or settled resident must earn to apply for a partner's visa and suggested scrapping a Tory plan to raise the minimum income requirement to £38,700, saying it would conflict with the right to family life (article 8, EHCR). 'It sounds really promising so far, but I still can't get hopeful,' Douglas, who grew up in the Scottish Borders, said. 'We're very secure, but this visa policy would push us into instability by being separated, funding two households, being a single parent home, essentially, for at least six months,' she added. Ricci earns more than the income requirement, but under the current rules, his salary is not taken into account. 'The other crazy thing is that my children are also British citizens,' Douglas added. 'We could come anytime alone and be completely dependent on the state for benefits, but we're not allowed to bring my husband who would work to support us. 'It's an awful lot of hoops to jump through to be able to live in my own country. It's really upsetting for my kids. Most of their family lives in the UK. They speak English fluently. They really don't understand why they can't live in their own country close to their cousins. 'We just basically feel forgotten about, rejected. We can't make any concrete future plans. But we would not be considering moving if we didn't think we would be financially independent.' Until April 2024, the income requirement was £18,600, or two and half times that figure in cash savings. The couple were close to meeting the savings requirement when the threshold was changed. Caroline Coombs, the executive director of Reunite Families UK, said families' voices had been 'ignored for too long', adding that the policy had 'caused untold damage to those whose only 'fault' has been to fall in love with someone born abroad' with a 'horrendous impact on children'. 'We appreciate Mac's reference to the fact that should the government decide to maintain an MIR [minimum income requirement], this should be lowered … however we firmly believe that there shouldn't be an MIR. Any threshold, even at minimum wage would still separate people who just want to be a family.' A Home Office spokesperson said: 'We are now considering [the Mac review's] findings and will respond in due course. The government has already committed to legislate to clarify the application of article 8 of the ECHR for applicants, caseworkers and the courts.'
Otago Daily Times
25-04-2025
- Sport
- Otago Daily Times
Sarah's uphill battle
Sarah Douglas on her way to winning her fourth and latest NZ mountain running title at Mt Maunganui in 2023. PHOTO: SUPPLIED At 40, Queenstowner Sarah Douglas is competing again at the New Zealand Mountain Running Championships at Cardrona today, but will need her feet to behave on the day. Douglas has won four NZ titles, the first in 2014, and competed in five world champs, but has been battling a recurrence of Morton's neuroma — a condition in which the tissue around the nerves leading into the toes thickens — for the past year and a-half. She first experienced it in 2014 and took almost a year off till she had a procedure which burnt the nerves. She says "some days are OK, some days are really bad — it's both feet, but the left one is worse". Douglas in fact hasn't competed since August when she completed a bucket-list event, the Sierra-Zinal Race, in Switzerland. She's since pulled out of last October's mountain run nationals and December's Kepler Challenge. Afterwards she reset her sights on Saturday's 11km uphill run — "I love the specific training for a set goal and I love competing". "I did struggle for a few weeks trying to adjust back to having to deal with that pain on a daily basis, but you learn to live with it a little bit, and it's gotten easier the last few weeks." She also underwent that same procedure on her feet again, but with less success. "I'll just give it my best on the day," Douglas says of Saturday's race. "You never know when you can do it again, so I might as well do it." She created history last year by becoming the first three-time winner of Fiordland's Routeburn Classic run. Meantime, a top under-20 prospect this Saturday will be Queenstown's James Weber, who this month became the first runner to win simultaneously the 800 metres, 1500m and 3000m at the South Island secondary schools athletics champs.
