Why is doctor who’s lived here 16 years being kicked out when NHS has staff crisis?
A NEPALESE NHS doctor who has lived in Britain for almost 16 years faces deportation after being told to take her ‘skills and experience’ back to her home country.
Dr Shashi Awai, 47, who was based in East Surrey Hospital’s ear, nose and throat department, has been prevented from working for almost two years as she fights her case.
She has worked in the NHS for a decade but has been refused leave to remain despite a critical shortage of doctors.
The British Medical Association criticised the Home Office’s ‘ inflexible’ approach and called for her to be granted indefinite leave so she can resume work.
Dr Awai said: ‘It is incredibly frustrating knowing that I could be helping people, instead I have been sat at home with my hands tied for over 20 months.
‘I know the crisis facing the NHS and I know they need me. I have devoted my life to universal healthcare. I’m being prevented from working because of a dysfunctional immigration system.’
The Home Office told Dr Awai in its letter refusing her leave to remain that she was not permitted to work in the UK and can instead ‘use her education, skills and experience to seek suitable employment in Nepal’.
The doctor, who is engaged to her British partner Ian Ferguson, was also told she could not stay on the grounds of establishing a private and family life here.
Dr Awai, who owns a £300,000 flat in Redhill, Surrey, was told she can instead ‘maintain contact’ from overseas ‘via the use of modern communications’.
Dr Chaand Nagpaul of the BMA said: ‘It is outrageous that a competent and skilled doctor, who has spent over a decade in the UK providing care to patients, will not be able to continue her work and is at risk of deportation.’ Her case has been taken up by her local Tory MP, Crispin Blunt, and 2,500 people have signed a petition.
Dr Awai has debts of more than £20,000 after borrowing from friends and using credit cards to get by while unable to work.
She said: ‘I’m also expected to leave my partner and continue my relationship over Skype. ‘I left Nepal over 26 years ago. In the past 16 years I have only visited there twice on holiday. I have no ties there, not even my parents live there any more.’
Dr Awai arrived in the UK early in 2003 on a student visa after studying medicine in Russia. She spent seven years taking English courses and medical exams to register with the General Medical Council and qualify to work in the UK as well as working part-time in the NHS. She married a banker, who is a British citizen, in 2011.
After failing to renew her student visa, Dr Awai applied for a spousal visa and was granted permission to stay in the UK for three years in 2013, when she also started working full-time for East Surrey Hospital.
But in 2015 she divorced. She told the Home Office and submitted an unsuccessful application for indefinite leave to remain. The Home Office has since refused to renew her visa, which ran out in mid-2016, leaving her unable to work.
One reason given is that she was not in the UK legally for the ‘requisite continuous period’ between 2010 and 2013. But Dr Awai said during this time she was in the process of appealing against refusal to give her visas.
‘They had my passport and I was entitled to appeal and eventually they gave me a three-year visa. I don’t see how this period can now be used against me.’
In January 2017 she applied to remain on human rights grounds, which was refused in June. The decision is now subject to a judicial review.
A Home Office spokesman said: ‘All visa applications are considered on their individual merits and in line with immigration rules. The Home Office is reviewing the case and has contacted Dr Awai to update her.’
‘I’m expected to leave my partner’
WHICH bone-headed Home Office drone can possibly have thought it right to order the deportation of Dr Shashi Awai, a Nepalese doctor who has served the NHS with distinction for 16 years?
With hospital trusts offering relocation fees of up to £18,500 to attract foreign doctors, the idea of throwing this perfectly good one out of the country on a technicality is simply perverse. It is a completely absurd decision. It should be rescinded immediately and Dr Awai offered a profound apology.