THE £38,000 salary cap will not come into force until 2025, the PM admitted last night.
Ministers quietly watered down the hike from £18,000 on Wednesday - sparking anger from Tory MPs.
In April it will rise to £29,000 instead, despite the Home Office announcing the £38,000 figure just two weeks ago.
MPs pointed the finger at Treasury for softening bid to get 750,000 net migration figure down.
David Jones, deputy chairman of the European Research Group, said: “The latest net migration figures very starkly showed the extent of the crisis we face.
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"Increasing the threshold was absolutely necessary to address that crisis.”
He added: “The Government should have stuck to its guns.”
Ex-minister Jonathan Gullis said: “This decision is deeply disappointing and undermines our efforts.”
In a bid to quell the anger, Mr Sunak said yesterday that the £38,700 a year salary threshold needed to bring a family to the UK will be introduced in early 2025.
Speaking in Lincoln, Mr Sunak defended the timetable, saying: “The principle here is absolutely right that if people are bringing dependents into this country as part of their family, they must be able to support them.
“We’re doing exactly as we said we would.
"We’re just doing it in two stages. So it will go up in a few months time and then it will go up again the full amount in early 2025.”
He added: “The levels of migration are far too high. They’ve got to come down.”
