London: The UK government on Monday warned that migrants on spousal visas who fail to speak English may face deportation, as it ann-ounced a new 20 million pound fund to improve the language skills among migrant Muslim women.
Writing in The Times newspaper, Prime Mi-nister David Cameron warned that migrants who failed to improve their fluency in English after two years may face deportation.
New rules will mean that from October this year, migrants coming to the UK on a five-year spousal visa with poor or no English skills will have to take a test after two and a half years to show they are making efforts to improve their English.
“We will now say if you don’t improve your fluency, that could affect your ability to stay in the UK. This will help make it clear to those men who stop their partners from integrating that there are consequences,” Cameron wrote in a commentary.
Arguing that community cohesion is the best antidote to extremism, Cameron pledged to fund English language classes for female migrants.
“We will also fund a dramatic improvement in the way we provide English language services for women. With a new 20 million pounds programme, we will make sure every woman from isolated communities with no English at all has access to classes.” Cameron also flagged up the Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities as the heart of the language barrier in the country.
He wrote: “We must also make more progress on English language.
New figures show that some 1,90,000 British Muslim women speak little or no English despite many having lived here for decades.
