A British man has failed in his attempts to raise the £62,500 the Government says he must have in savings in order to bring his Filipino-born wife and their two children to live with him in the UK.
Dean Homer turned to crowd-funding, asking members of the public to donate to his cause, to try to raise the cash. Legally, he must be able to show he has access to this sum in order to obtain UK visas for his family because he is returning to the UK without a job.
However, he has been unable to raise the required amount and is now planning to travel back to Britain without his wife of 17 years, Meljie, and their children Charlotte, 16, and three-year-old James. The couple, who met in 1996, had been living with their family in Manila, but Mr Homer wants to return home to Wolverhampton after losing his job and because his elderly mother now has health problems.
He was able to raise £335 through his crowd-funding attempt but told the Daily Telegraph he had been unable to get any momentum behind his efforts.
Mr Homer said: “Knowing that I’m going to be split up from my family and have to come back to the UK alone is horrible. I can’t explain it. To leave behind my three-and-a-half year old boy is what will kill me the most.”
To bring his family to the UK, Mr Homer must either have a job for six months paying an annual salary of at least £24,800 or have savings of £62,500. He turned to the crowd-funding idea to raise the money because he did not want to leave his family in Manila for six months while he was working in the UK.