Ms Karina Korotkevica:

Family reunification is one of the biggest pain points of employment permit holders and among the main queries we see in the drop-in centre. When general employment permit holders want to bring their family members such as spouses and children here they first need to wait at least 12 months while they are on the current work permit. It usually takes two years to prove that they have the same level of income, their salary is stable and nothing is going on in their current place of employment. A strict income threshold is applied. The permit holder needs to earn a minimum of €30,000 a year to bring a spouse here and if he or she wants to bring dependent children here, an additional threshold is applied in line with the past family income supplement rates. Even if someone is successful in bringing his or her spouse here, the spouse will be granted a stamp 3 visa, which is a dependency stamp, and is not allowed to work. In other words, the work permit holder is the only one working in the family and the only one sponsoring the family. That is extremely difficult for the workers, especially those working in meat factories, when they need to pay rent, buy food, pay school and other bills. To compare them with the critical skills of work permit holders, their spouses are entitled-----