Over the years since 2011, we had occasionally chatted about the possibility of returning to the UK, but when we spoke about it, we had always assumed we would move together.

Suddenly, family life was being measured not in love, commitment, history or shared parenthood, or in plans and potential opportunities for happiness but in income calculations and thresholds prescribed by legislation. 

That announcement transformed what had been a long-term family notion or possibility into an urgent and painful reality. If we did not make the move now, if I did not move as quickly as possible, since the government was actively looking at raising the ‘MIR’ to nearly £40,000, what is to stop future governments setting the amount at even more unattainable?

There is also something else that needs to be said plainly.

Before all of this, we had built a life in Thailand. I was working, earning, and providing for my family. We were not in crisis. We were not dependent. We were living.

But circumstances change.

During COVID, our travel and tour business fell off a precipice. Practically overnight, the market disappeared. And when tourism eventually returned, it was not the same market we had known. Many of the hotels we had previously worked alongside brought their tour desk operations in-house, removing the partnerships we had relied upon. The landscape had shifted, and it did not shift back. During this desperately difficult period, I have been teaching online and also with more time on my hands started training as a priest; ultimately being ordained in May 2023.

Alongside this, I was dealing with a serious back injury, followed by surgery and a period of recovery that limited what I was able to do physically. It became increasingly difficult to rebuild what we had before, even as we tried.

So this was not a case of choosing between two equally viable options.

It was a recognition that the life we had built in Thailand, while once sustainable, was no longer secure in the way it had been. And at the same time, the UK immigration rules made it clear that if we were to secure our long-term future as a family in Britain, I would need to return, rebuild income, and meet the Minimum Income Requirement.

There was also the question of Sebastian.

As a parent, you think not only about the present, but about what lies ahead. The opportunity for him to grow within the UK education system — to access the National Curriculum, to have that foundation available to him — became part of that wider decision. Not the only reason, but certainly one that mattered.

So the decision to return to the UK was not simply about compliance with immigration rules.

It was about necessity.
It was about changed circumstances.
It was about responsibility — to provide, to rebuild, and to create a stable future for my family.

We could no longer remain together in Thailand and simply plan our future steadily.

Instead, there emerged a stark and brutal choice: either stay together abroad indefinitely, or temporarily separate so that I could return to the UK, rebuild my working life, and meet the financial requirements to bring my family home. 

So, that is how this journey began.  Not with a dream of relocation. Not with excitement. Not with adventure. 

It began with the discovery — the discovery that immigration policy was no abstract matter, but something with the power to divide a husband from his wife, me from Susi, and a father from his child, me from Sebastian, for month after month, all in the name of compliance. 

This diary is a record of that journey: the leaving, the uncertainty, the search for work, the emotional cost, the bureaucracy, the surprises, the setbacks, and, I hope, the eventual reunion.  Behind every visa application, there is a file. Behind every file, there is a family. This is ours.

Lloyd Hobbard-Mitchell