Migrants can save Highlands, MPs told

THE Highland population crisis could be ‘undone in a generation’ if immigration rules are changed, MPs were told yesterday by a family facing deportation.

The Brains, who moved from Australia four years ago to set up a new life in the Dingwall, Rossshire, were in Skye to speak to the Scottish Affairs Committee.

As well as telling members about their battle to stay in the country, they also said there are thousands more like them caught up in the UK’s complicated and expensive immigration system.

He said: ‘Immigration policy is specifically and deliberately designed to be as opaque, difficult and expensive as possible.’

Mr Brain, his wife Kathryn and their son Lachlan, seven, hit the headlines earlier this year as they desperately fought to stay in Scotland. Both parents had employment and their son has been taught in Gaelic at school.

But even though they moved to

‘Population woes can be undone’

a rural area eager to welcome new young families, the Home Office refused to let them stay after the post-study work visa was scrapped ten months after they arrived in the UK. They had just days before they were due to be put on a plane back to Australia but have now been given until August to reapply after Mrs Brain was offered a job that fulfil the visa requirement.

‘The Highland population woes could be undone in a generation if they open the door to those people who want to come, live and contribute to the Highlands,’ Mr Brain told the committee.

He said there were tens of thousands of diaspora Scots around the world who dreamed of making the move and suggested an Australian-style system of relaxed immigration rules in rural areas.

The committee, chaired by Nationalist MP Pete Wishart, was in Skye to discuss the challenges of population decline in the Highlands and islands.