Â鶹Éç

Available for over a year

Good morning. This week the government announced that new visa rules will include a significant increase in the required salary for family visas. It’s triggered alarm bells for many people whose most intimate relationships cross national lines. It’s also raised the question of whether we bear a collective responsibility for other people’s marriages, whether they’re citizens of this country or not. Our answer will probably depend on what we think marriage is for; is it only for the couple, or is there more at stake? When my husband and I got married 7 years ago, the liturgy we used made some fairly lofty claims about both the nature of marriage and the extent of our commitment to each other. Our vows were made in the presence of God, promising to be faithful to each other for better or worse, richer or poorer, in sickness and in health. A challenging series of promises to make. But even more than this, we were told that marriage was also a picture of Jesus’ love for the church; a symbol of self-sacrifice that might put a lot of us off making such a commitment in the first place. And, importantly, we were assured, our marriage was not only to be for our good, but for the good of any children we might care for, for our community, and even for the whole of society. Many of us are used to thinking of marriage as a private and personal event, only really concerning the two people at its heart. But the Christian marriage liturgy takes a different approach. The couple make their vows in a public ceremony, not a private one: the community witnesses and welcomes the creation of a new family, and hears the well-recognised but weighty declaration that ‘those whom God has joined together, let no one put asunder’. We might be used to assuming a strict divide between personal and public life. But on closer examination such a divide breaks down. My husband is not a British citizen, and so upholding our vows has not only required personal faithfulness, but also our ability to meet the salary requirements and costs of the family visa system. I used to joke that the best financial advice I could offer friends was that if they had to get married, they shouldn’t marry a foreigner. But in the midst of debates on the politics of family migration, I find that the good of this relationship for us, for our child, and our commitment to our community can’t be quantified in economic terms. Our closest relationships are a collective gift, regardless of personal wealth.