Foreign spouses could be told to leave UK under plans to cut legal migration
(www.independent.co.uk)
Why does the responsibility lay on Britain rather than the other nation?
Where does the responsibility come from in the first place?
Despite the many cracks and weaknesses, I love how our country tries to take care of every member to a basic standard of living, regardless even of fault or blame. And for all its struggles, I'm very proud of the NHS.
But I think membership in the UK community is prior to this. We don't kick citizens out - not even dual nationals. "Bugger off to your other country and come back when you're rich." (Ok, we did that a bit in the past, but that's a different story.)
Nor do we restrict, by law, people bringing new members of our community through childbirth. We might have opinions, but not prohibitive laws.
When we chose, as a nation, to care for people from a national level - of which I'm proud! - we make that choice to do that for the whole nation. To say to a family, one of whose members is a citizen, "your family can't be part of this because you're poor," seems quite terrible to me.
It’s a lovely ideal to suggest that we can welcome all to the UK with open arms
It would be. But we're not talking about welcoming everyone, we're talking about welcoming half-British families. Husbands and wives, where one partner is British.