Hope for trainee GP facing deportation
A TRAINEE GP facing deportation said yesterday that officials were reconsidering his visa application.
Dr Luke Ong, whose case was raised by the Daily Mail, said he lived in fear of a knock at the door and removal. Officials want to kick him out because he was a few days late renewing a visa.
More than 67,000 people have signed a petition in his support.
Yesterday Dr Ong, who has been training to become a GP in Manchester for three years, wrote on
the Change.org website: ‘The Home Office have sent my lawyers an email saying they would “reconsider my application”.
‘The exact meaning of this is hard to decipher but I will keep you updated if I hear anything more.’
He said last night: ‘With more pressure it might give officials a bit of a kick. I really wasn’t expecting this much support.’ The British Medical Association and Royal College of GPs reacted with fury to the NHS doctor’s ‘incomprehensible’ treatment earlier this week.
Dr Ong has thanked the Mail for the support. He said: ‘I’m really grateful to the Mail for standing up for me, and the support as a whole is very heartening.’
Dr Ong is from Singapore and has been in the UK since beginning his degree in medicine at Manchester University in 2007. He said his seven-month battle to stay had been stressful. He has not been able to work and has been volunteering instead.
The 31-year-old insists his failure to contact immigration officials until last July, a month before his visa was due to expire, was an ‘honest oversight’. He was not given an appointment until September – and then told to leave.
The trainee GP won an initial appeal, but the Home Office appealed to a higher tribunal.
The Home Office did not respond to requests for comment last night.