Our Families’ Stories

I lived in The Philippines from 2005 until 2015. Since then I have been living and working in UK and returning to the Philippines every Christmas for as long as I can afford. I met my wife in 2007, we were friends until 2009 and married in Jan 2017. We have three children, two young daughters (5 & 8) and my wife's son (11) from previous. We also had another son but he died at five weeks old.

Growing up as a Skype family is totally confusing. You have this interactive image on the screen that you are supposed to form bonds with. Trust, love, respect how can these complex emotions be formed via a screen? Our daughter has spent large chunks of her life in hospital, with chronic lung disease. How can a screen help her to feel brave and supported? It can't.

Here is my story. My husband is Thai and we have a 3 year old daughter. His visa was refused so I gave birth alone the whole experience was very stressful and depressing.

Our son was born on January 1st 2018. Although he is still a baby I believe now is the most important time to gain a bond with parents,but how can he do that if his Baba is still in Turkey? Facetime/WhatsApp/Skype calls aren't enough.

We lived happily together as a family in Turkey for the first 6 years of our daughter’s life. Following on from the military coup which directly impacted our family and for other reasons we decided we would return to live in the UK. Myself and our now 8 year old daughter had to return to the UK without her father. It took a year as an experienced and qualified secondary school teacher before I could find suitable work in my town to meet the income threshold of £18,600 and a further 6 months before we could apply. In total our family was separated for almost 2 years.

I remember very clearly when I read of the new rule changes. I remember sitting, with my one year old daughter on my knee, confused and shocked. How would we as a family, me as a mum who only worked part time in a developing country ever be able to meet this new criteria?

It's difficult to find the right words to use to describe our situation. My daughter is still a baby.. a toddler.. therefore unaware. Unaware emotionally and mentally of the fact that because of the income threshold her daddy has not been able to hold her. Unaware that her daddy ended up in the hospital after suffering a nervous mental breakdown trying so desperately to bring his family home.

I am from the US, but have lived in the UK since 2008, and became a naturalised citizen in 2014. I am also a divorced father of two lovely children, who live in the US with their mother. In the past couple of years, my ex-wife's mother has become increasingly ill, and requires care. Since she lives in Russia, it is very difficult to arrange any care, as family members generally provide care for their elders.

When the family arrived in the UK, the older children were detained at Heathrow, denied entry and were booked on flights to New York by themselves. Their passports were confiscated, they were fingerprinted and photographed. They had to return in 3 days to be removed from the country (after the parents appealed to not send them back immediately). They hired a lawyer to have it overturned, and they were given 6 months to sort out the situation.

We have been living as a happy family until January 2017, when we had to move to the UK from abroad. I had to go to Ukraine to apply for the spouse visa and my husband went to the UK to start his new job, find a place for us to live and settle down. I was pregnant with our second son then and was due in July 2017, our elder son was 19 months old when we had to say goodbye to his dad and my husband and go to Ukraine. In total, we were separated for 4.5 months but we still see the consequences and deal with them.