We can stay! Victory for Australian family in deportation battle

Couple’s joy as job offer satisfies Home Office rules

AN Australian family battling deportation have won their fight to stay in Scotland.

Kathryn and Gregg Brain and their seven-year-old son Lachlan had faced being deported after failing to meet visa requirements.

But yesterday it was confirmed that Mrs Brain has been offered a job that will allow her family to stay in the Highlands – for at least another year.

Last night, Mrs Brain said: ‘I am overwhelmed with emotion, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. It has been seven months that we have been without work, that we have been struggling and fighting through this process.’

The family set up home in Dingwall, Ross-shire, after moving to the UK in 2011 when Mrs Brain was granted a student visa. Her husband and son were classed as dependants.

She had planned to progress to a poststudy work visa but this was scrapped by the UK Government in 2012.

Mrs Brain studied Scottish history and archaeology at the University of the Highlands and Islands before taking up a job as a receptionist in a legal office. But her student visa expired in December last year.

This left the couple fearing that they and their son, who has been schooled entirely in Gaelic, would be sent back to Australia.

They desperately tried to find work which would meet the requirements for a Tier 2 visa application, and even applied for leave to remain under the European Convention on Human Rights but their efforts were rejected by the Home Office.

Yesterday, however, the Home Office told the family they could stay after Mrs Brain

‘I can’t describe the feeling’

secured a job as a museum curator and historian with Macdonald Hotels in Aviemore, Inverness-shire.

The company was able to offer employment which meets the requirements of a Tier 2 visa application. This allows a candidate to stay for a maximum of five years and 14 days, or as long as it takes to be given a certificate of sponsorship.

The Home Office has only granted the family the visa for one year but they can apply to extend this after 12 months.

Yesterday the Brains collected Lachlan from school early to tell him the news, which he described as ‘lovely’. He then asked them for a trampoline to celebrate.

Speaking at their rented cottage, Mrs Brain said: ‘I can’t describe the feeling, we’re grateful and very thankful to everyone.

‘We’re starting from scratch now. We’ve spent all our savings – and then some – and we’re living in a property which we have to be out of by the end of the month.

‘That’s our next challenge but it’s a small one in comparison.

‘We’ve got a brilliant employer on board who already has a sponsorship licence in place.

‘They had to get a certificate of sponsorship for this particular position but the position itself meets all the criteria for the Home Office.’

Mr Brain added: ‘We are elated but I am furious that we have had to go through all of us.

‘There are so many other people who have contacted us with similar stories and I don’t know why ours is any different. There seems to be a culture of “inventive refusal” where people try to find reasons to refuse applications.’

The couple plan to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary by renewing their vows on Orkney, where Mrs Brain will also officially graduate next week. Ian Blackford, MP for Ross, Skye and Lochaber, who has led the campaign in support of the family, said: ‘This is a victory for them and a victory for common sense.

‘I am delighted that Kathryn Brain has secured a job which is Tier 2 compliant and I am grateful to the Home Office for ultimately doing the right thing. But the family should never have been in this position. Their lives have been completely turned upside down in the past few months.’

First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, who met the family at Holyrood earlier this year, said: ‘This is great news for the family and an outcome that I warmly welcome. I’m glad the UK Government has finally seen sense on this occasion, but the Brains should not have had this cloud of uncertainty hanging over them for so long.’

A Home Office spokesman said: ‘We have always been clear with the Brain family that if a suitable job offer was received, an application to remain in the UK would be considered. We gave them a number of extensions on an exceptional basis to allow them to try to secure a job that would allow them to meet the immigration rules.

‘Mrs Brain was subsequently offered a job with a hotel group. We are satisfied that it meets the conditions for a Tier 2 visa.’