Asylum orphan boy’s case is taken to Prime Minister
THE asylum case of a 10-year-old Glasgow boy who was left orphaned when his mother died this year has been raised with the Prime Minister.
Giorgi Kakava, from Springburn, is at risk of being deported to Georgia unless he and his grandmother are granted refugee status by the UK Home Office.
The boy’s mother Sopio, known as Sophie, died in February before her asylum application could be completed.
He has been living with his grandmother, Ketino Baikhadze, since then, but she has been living in Scotland illegally after she abandoned her plans to return to Georgia when her daughter died.
Glasgow North East MP Paul Sweeney asked the Prime Minister to ensure Giorgi was not sent to a country he has no knowledge of.
Mr Sweeney told Theresa May during Prime Minister’s Questions: “Giorgi is 10. He was tragically orphaned in February. He has lived in Glasgow since he was three.
“His only l anguage is English and he speaks it with the same accent as I do.
“Yet he now faces being deported to Georgia, his late mother’s country of birth, becoming another statistic that suffers at the hands of this Prime Minister’s hostile environment policy.”
The Prime Minister said Mr Sweeney raised “a very specific individual case. It is right it should be looked at properly. That is what I will ask the Home Office to do.”
Local minister Reverend Brian Casey, of Springburn Parish Church, has led a campaign to allow Giorgi to stay in Scotland and has gathered thousands of signatures on a petition.
The petition now has mopre than 60,000 signatures and was handed into the Home Office in Glasgow where officials will decide on the case, by Giorgi’s grandmother Ketino.
Mr Casey said: “I am very pleased Prime Minister Theresa May has assured the House of Commons her Home Secretary will examine Giorgi’s case personally and carefully. Seeing Sajid Javid nodding his head in agreement was reassuring he will take it very seriously.”
Giorgi was three when he fled Georgia with his mother Sopio Baikhadze after she discovered his father, who later died, owed money to gangsters there.