Borders: Part One

I
was lying on a couch in my mother’s basement in the house where I
grew up. I knew every whorl in the wood paneling and every textured
pastel in the wallpaper. It was cold, but then, my mother’s basement
was always cold. I wouldn’t be surprised to find it on some kind of
registry of arctic places at risk due to rising global temperatures.
There was a ping on my phone and I checked my email and it was
exactly the one I’d been waiting for. That I’d been thinking about
for nearly a year. It was from a UK government agency called the
Sheffield Visa Section. A decision had been made about my visa.

The
email came weeks later than I expected, though it’s possible this had
more to do with my expectation than the folks at the visa centre in
Sheffield. I’d been waiting nearly five weeks. I paid £600 extra to
have it expedited. Expedition, apparently, is a relative concept.

I
slid my trembling fingers tightly through the pop socket I’d recently
glued to the back of my phone and thumbed open the email.

The
body was as cold as the basement. ‘A decision has been made on your
UK Visa application. Please see attached text.’ After that, a
disclaimer stating that no one would try to contact me about my
application further, and if they did, that I should suspect fraud.

Shards
of something in my stomach. Metal in my mouth. I opened the
attachment. My phone asked several questions regarding my preferred
method of viewing PDF’s and it’s likely I spoke my answer.

‘Does
anyone, I mean ever, have a preference how they view their PDF’s?’

It
loaded. I read and held my breath.

Dear
KYLE DAVID IVERSON, your human rights claim in an application for
entry clearance made on 6 September 2019 has been refused.

Refused.
Your claim has been refused. A frozen mixture of disbelief and rage
crystallized within me, calved off into a dark, churning sea.
Refused.

Under
an all caps header called REASONS FOR REFUSAL, Sheffield first listed
the category under which I had applied for the visa in the first
place: seeking entry clearance on the basis of family life with my
spouse Bethany.

Then,
beneath bold subheadings, they listed the following:

Suitability

Your
application does not fail on grounds of suitability under section
S-EC on Appendix FM.

Relationship
Requirement

You
meet the eligibility relationship requirement of paragraphs
E-ECP.2.1. To 2.10.

Financial
Requirement

You
do not meet the eligibility financial requirement of paragraphs
E-ECP.3.1. to 3.4. You have stated in your Visa Application Form that
you meet the financial requirement through CAT A. I am not able to
take into account any potential employment you have available to you
in the UK or any offers of financial support from third parties. In
order to meet the financial requirements of Appendix FM your sponsor
needs a gross income of at least £18,600 per annum.

Translation:
You seem cool, your relationship looks legit, but your wife is only
slightly too poor. Toodleoo!

We
knew it was going to be a problem. Beth made £18,000 as a trainee
journalist for a major regional news organization. That’s $21,700 if
you’re keeping score at home. For full time work. 40-50 hours per
week plus extensive train travel.

See,
the UK government does this clever thing where they allow employers
to pay disgustingly low wages under the guise of work experience.
People looking to break into competitive fields like journalism are
required to engage in a drawn out series of exams and training
conducted by the NCTJ, a self-appointed body that has no affiliation
with the government, a trade union, or anything else.

To
go through the process takes about 18 months provided you can afford
the expensive study material, hire a private tutor to teach you
shorthand, and put in long hours after your workday.

Anyway.

We
were £600 short. We knew that going in. My income in the US? Didn’t
matter. Her parents’ income? Didn’t matter. Hers was the only income
Sheffield cared about. She asked her company for a modest raise which
would put us over the threshold, and they refused, flat out, fuck you
very much.

During
the months preceding our application, Beth worked a second job for
her same company. She sat beneath a tent at various public events
(remember those?) and sold goodie bags with newspapers, wine gums,
and bottles of water for £1, for which they paid her slightly below
minimum wage.

By
August, the last month of paychecks which would be included in our
application, she’d earned nearly £800 additional income, putting us
above the threshold.

But
unbeknownst to us, her company enrolled her in an automatic pension
scheme which placed some of her pretax earnings into a pension
account.

According
to our application, contributing to her pension dropped Beth’s income
to £18,302. Which meant we were short £298.

Want
to know what you can buy for £298?

A
decent set of cookware from M&S or an Xbox One with a second
wireless remote or a Squier Telecaster electric guitar with dual
humbuckers or- you get the idea.

Back
in the basement, I read the email again and again. It became almost
sadistic. The cold words developed a kind of sneer as they slammed
shut the gates to an entire country. To the life and future my wife
and I had been planning. Closed the gates not just to me, but to her
too. The application cost nearly £2,600 and led to a decision that
shut us out for the cost of cookware.

I
called Beth. She was at work. In her way, she knew what happened
before I could speak. Through sobs, she asked the question I had been
too discombobulated to ask myself. She asked: ‘What do we do now?’

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