The Home Office has reviewed operation of the cruel Immigration Rules for Adult Dependent Relatives such as parents or grandparents introduced in July 2012. They are considered to be meeting their policy objectives and will not be changed, the review has concluded. Senior policy adviser Clive Peckover writes:

As the note concludes, this reflects the policy intention of reducing burdens on the taxpayer while continuing to allow ADRs to settle here where their long-term personal care needs can only adequately be met in the UK by their sponsor here, without recourse to public funds.

It is now virtually impossible for an adult dependent relative, typically a parent or grandparent, to succeed under the current rules and the Home Office has conceded that far fewer cases qualify under the new rules than was expected. It seems that is considered an added bonus rather than a mistake.

The review finds that the number of grants to parents and grandparents plummeted from 2,325 per year to an average of 162 per year. The number of successful cases each year has actually fallen, and most of the grants involved an initial refusal followed by an allowed appeal.

For some perspective, remember that annual net migration is over 300,000 per year.

For some mysterious reason the NHS savings of around £5 million per year are calculated cumulatively over a 10 year rather than 1 year period, though, a transparent and disingenuous means of inflating the savings. The total NHS budget is £116.4 billion, so the savings work out as 0.004% per year.

The review considered alternatives to the new very restrictive rules such as compulsory health insurance, a financial bond or an increased NHS surcharge but rejects them on the grounds that this would make the £2,676 applications, er, too expensive for some people.

Depressingly, the review is an entirely economic one. The section on “impact on sponsors in the UK” is purely concerned with lost tax revenue or adverse impact on the NHS of migrants leaving to care for their relatives. The awful emotional impact of forcing sponsors to choose between their lives in the UK and their desire to care for their elderly relatives is simply irrelevant as far as civil servants and ministers are concerned.

Source: Adult dependent relatives: review – Publications – GOV.UK