The £18,600.00 minimum income immigration rule might be illegal

And I am certain this will get thrashed about the courts in 2013 and I know how everyone seems to be focusing on article 8 and so on..

However, doing a bit of research I came across the Working Time Directive! Imagine if a person earns the minimum wage, they earn £6.19 per hour (if over 21). This means on minimum wage a person must work 250.4 hours each month, broken down over 4 weeks being 62.6 hours each week. The Working Time Directive clearly states that a person cannot be compelled to work more than 48 hours unless they agree and that there can be no detriment for not agreeing. This was included into UK law with the Working Time Regulations of 1998.

So the question has to be asked. If a person does not agree to work more than 48 hours per week in order to qualify under the new sponsorship rules, does failing to secure their partners settlement visa count as "no detriment for not agreeing"?

I think Theresa May and her gang of civil servants were so busy working out how to argue article 8 as a qualified right and how it won't count, that they forgot about the other laws that might have a serious impact on this new rule of hers. However, David Cameron could increase the minimum wage to £8.08 per hour and then the new rule can stand without fear of breaching UK and EU law (at least on this issue)....

I've been exploring all possible angles. Including getting an Irish passport through parentage and then renouncing my British citizenship to take up the EEA route.

Crazy country we live in when citizens need to consider such drastic measures

All it proves to me, is that the Government is targeting the wrong people.........

There's always a loophole For me I just know it will be a matter of time and patience.

No change in plan Peter. Just setting plan B, C and D in place. Oh, and being as much of a pain to the UKBA as possible with my freedom of information requests which will help others through my blogging and reporting of them.

There are currently a few cases about to hit the courts with respect to these rules. The legal teams usually go with what they know will get them revoked first and foremost so the likelyhood is that these rules will get quashed because the Home Secretary does not have the legal right to enact such major changes without consulting Parliament! Or at least that was the result of one case that ended in failure back in July and there are legal eagles trying to send these rules to the dustbin using those same principals.

Failing that, article 8 and the working time directive would be avenues to attack these kinds of rules as against existing laws.

I am 99.99% sure that some time in 2013 Theresa May will have egg on her face from all of this. It will backfire and cost her the job she so obviously struggles to do.

If they set the figure at minimum wage levels for working a 48 hour week, not one person would complain about them! Well, perhaps a few but it would be deemed fair and honest to expect people to earn at least that amount. It would also mean expats could return to the UK before their other halves and get any job available to them and be easily afforded the spouse visa.

But any changes should be voted on in the commons, which none of this was..

Um, a United States of Eurabia?

Granted some changes with how the EU works need amending, more open and transparent and that sort of thing, but the UKIP line of the EU being a proxy for Berlin is simply pandering to the xenophobic Brit who thinks of Germany as Hitler's Germany. I think we all know as well that the same demographic is an ageing one and will probably die out soon, so I think UKIPs core support will be gone within 20 years or so.

But come the next election I fully support UKIP and all power to them! I might even drop leaflets for them in the Sale area of Greater Manchester, it might chip away at the Conservative vote and swing that seat to Labour Which is why many progressives such as myself seemingly support UKIP, they're just a tool to bash the Tories with...

Which we signed up for before we even entered into the EU. That was the promise, free movement of people and labour. We knew it meant we could go elsewhere and work on the continent and so could fellow Europeans come and work here. Auf Wiedersehen Pet comes to mind..

I agree. But UKIP don't help, they do next to nothing as MEP's and given how we have a second house of unelected Lords, we are not the democracy some people pretend we are. More transparency and a greater democracy is needed all round.

Hitlers policy of National Socialism is more in line with UKIP policies than anything that could be considered Socialist. Controversial as that might sound, the evidence is in what they say and what they say they want to do.

Only because the government are bent on destroying the rights of you and me from bringing our spouse into the country in an attempt to please the Xenophobes who support them and make it look like they are actually doing something about immigration. Think about that for a second, a so called small government party wants to take away the liberty of British citizens who marry a foreigner or live overseas and have a family overseas from ever returning back with them - unless they are wealthy.

One thing that makes me sick in politics is the decimation of our rights as citizens, and all parties are guilty of it. Years gone by, a British man stationed abroad for the army might have fallen in Love with a lady from another part of the world. It was never a problem, he could marry her and bring her to the UK as you can with most countries. It was your birthright as a Briton! Since then, this government and the previous government decided to hit immigration by hitting the British citizen because they knew there wasn't a damn thing they could do about EU immigration. So to placate the xenophobic little englander, the liberties and rights that you and I once had, and knew we had - have been eroded and destroyed for the sake of a political gimmick.

There are problems with the EU but if UKIP ever get a serious foothold in this country, we will all suffer for it.