There’s this horrible misconception doing the rounds that immigrating to the UK is a total piece of cake. The way populist, political automatons like Theresa May prattle on about it, you’d think British taxpayers are funding deluxe caviar baths and a complimentary passport service for known terrorists down on the beaches of Dover or something.

But the truth isn’t quite so glamorous.

I'm not British but I’ve spent all my adult life here, and this place is my entire world. My wife is British, my children are British, my university degree is British and so is my mortgage. For all its faults, for better or for worse, I love this country. It’s the only home I’ve got now, and I can’t see myself raising my children anywhere else.

Then again, if Theresa May gets her way, I won’t get to watch my kids grow up at all.

You see, the Prime Minister has spent the better part of her political career selfishly fuelling anti-immigrant sentiment to consolidate her own power. As Home Secretary, she repeatedly bent over backwards to placate her party’s nonsensically loyal legions by constantly shifting goalposts and fiddling with rock-hard visa pathways in order to feign productivity and make out like she had the fantastical ability to reverse decades of globalisation.

Michael Fallon says Tories have not costed immigration proposals

First, she got rid of post-study work visas to make sure foreign graduates couldn’t stay here to share their skills with UK companies. Next, she helped roll out an NHS health surcharge to ensure taxpaying foreigners were charged twice for the same level of care. Then, her Government hiked application fees by over 25 per cent to make sure poor people couldn’t even afford to fill out the paperwork to try stay with their family members in the first place.

But all that pales in comparison to May’s decision to introduce a minimum earnings threshold that says people like me don’t deserve to tuck our kids in at night unless we’re bringing in more money than 41 per cent of UK-born workers (and 55 per cent of women) do. As a point of reference, that’s an annual salary of £18,600 – and to a politician kicking up her feet in a £1m house and enjoying lucrative stock options, that might not seem like a big ask.

But most of us aren’t so lucky. That’s why the Supreme Court has since attacked May’s minimum income requirement as “particularly harsh”. She’s effectively taken the right to fall in love and start a family, and transformed it into a luxury privilege that only some can afford – and campaigners reckon about 15,000 British children are now growing up as "Skype kids" in broken families because of it.

After brushing up on the Conservative Party’s callous 2017 manifesto, it’s looking like my family could be next.

In between all those juicy, Thatcheresque bits about censoring the internet and choosing who deserves to eat lunch, May also decided to sneak in two pompous campaign pledges designed exclusively to distract Britain’s closet racists by tripling down on her predecessor’s impossibly foolhardy “tens of thousands” net migration pledge.

Theresa May in quotes Show all 10 1 /10 Theresa May in quotes Theresa May in quotes On being described by the former chancellor Ken Clarke as “a bloody difficult woman”: “Politics could do with some Bloody Difficult Women actually” Rex Features Theresa May in quotes On keeping secrets even from her husband: “There are some things I am told that I am not able to confide in anybody” Rex Features Theresa May in quotes On the relentless focus on her appearance during a speech at the Women in the World summit: "I like clothes and I like shoes. One of the challenges for women in the workplace is to be ourselves and I say you can be clever and like clothes. You can have a career and like clothes” Getty Images Theresa May in quotes On comparisons to Margaret Thatcher: “I think there can only ever be one Margaret Thatcher. I’m not someone who naturally looks to role models. I’ve always, whatever job it is I’m doing at the time, given it my best shot. I put my all into it, and try to do the best job I can” AFP/Getty Images Theresa May in quotes On her rebelliousness, or lack of, as a teenager: “I probably was Goody Two Shoes at school” Getty Images Theresa May in quotes On being replaced as chairman by Lord Saatchi and Liam Fox in 2003: “Yes, it takes two men to step into the shoes of one woman” AFP/Getty Images Theresa May in quotes What Theresa May said when she was asked about her political ambitions during an interview with Miriam González Durántez, a lawyer married to Nick Clegg, in December: MD: "My very last question is: that little girl who is somewhere there, is she dreaming of becoming the next British Prime Minister?" TM: "She’s dreaming of carrying on doing a good job in the Home Office" Getty Images Theresa May in quotes On not being able to have children: “I like to keep my personal life personal. We couldn’t have children, we dealt with it and moved on. I hope nobody would think that mattered; I can still empathise, understand people and care about fairness and opportunity” Getty Images Theresa May in quotes On whether she can deliver the mandate of the EU referendum: “I think for party members and indeed for others, I would say look at my record. I think they can see that I’m somebody who gets on with the job, but I’m also somebody who says it as I see it and actually delivers on what I say” Getty Images Theresa May in quotes On the equally relentless obsession with her shoes: “As a woman I know you can be very serious about something and very soberly dressed add a little bit of interest with footwear. I always tell women ‘you have to be yourself, don’t assume you have to fit into a stereotype’ and if your personality is shown through your clothes or shoes, so be it” Getty Images

How? First, she’s going to increase that “particularly harsh” minimum income requirement by some arbitrary and mysterious amount that she’ll presumably just pluck out of thin air whenever it tickles her fancy. Then, she’s going to ensure nobody can reach that salary threshold in the first place by imposing a £2,000 a year fine on any UK company ballsy enough to hire a foreigner from outside Europe.

That tosses thousands of British couples between a rock and a hard place. And because I’m still years away from earning the right to stay in this country indefinitely, I don’t even get to cast a ballot and have a say in my family’s future. I’ve got no clue what’s going to happen. All I can do is hope and pray that everything works out.

Listen: you probably don’t know me or care what happens to my family, and that’s just fine. I’m not asking you to care. But if you give even half a damn about the liberal values and bountiful integrity that make this country truly great, you’ve got to speak out for those of us without a voice on 8 June.

Theresa May wants Britain to be divided clean down the middle. She wants to create a "strong and stable" dystopia where love and happiness are expensive luxuries awarded only to the privileged few. She wants fundamental rights stripped from everyone she thinks is unworthy. Is that the sort of country you want to live in?