Home Office make your b
THE letter arrived along with a handful of Christmas cards from family and friends. But unlike the festive good wishes which landed on the doormat last Friday morning, Russell Felber had a queasy feeling that the sentiments in that officiallooking communication would be far from warmly expressed.
The unwelcome Christmas gift came from the Home Office, telling Mr Felber and his wife Ellen that their application for leave to remain permanently in the UK had been refused. Little explanation was given, just some bland officialese telling the American couple that, after almost six years in Scotland, they must quit the country within 30 days of receiving notice.
So what great offence had been committed that justified such swift and terrible judgement? Were they drug-dealers or sex traffickers, or worse, terrorists?
Far from it. In fact, this pair of fiftysomething New Yorkers have worked tirelessly to build up a successful it empties daily of worshippers and tourists. In and well-reviewed B&B business in their her spare time, she is even learning Gaelic. adopted home of Inverness. Yet, despite plunging wholeheartedly into
They are active members of the Episcopalian community works and having sunk their life’s congregation at Inverness Cathedral, where savings of more than £400,000 into buying and Mrs Felber, 54, is a keen bell-ringer. She also transforming the Torridon guest house in Kenneth acts as a gatekeeper, trusted with keys to the Street into top-notch accommodation, the sacred building which she uses to lock up after Felbers have failed to meet Home Office criteria to gain permanent residency. They are still unsure what they did wrong.
‘The Home Office were constantly changing the regulations and didn’t tell you. They just kept moving the goalposts,’ said a despairing Mr Felber, 59, yesterday. ‘I feel they are just trying to get rid of us, but I have no idea why. ‘The stress has been terrible and my wife ended up in hospital after the removal letter arrived. She’s home now and I’m just trying to keep things calm over Christmas for her sake. We are up against faceless bureaucracy and nobody is talking to us. I think we are just a number to them.
‘We pay our National Insurance and our taxes. We’re not taking any public money and we’re contributing to society in our way. It feels like we are being punished for working hard and doing well.’
The Felbers are only the latest hardworking family settled in the Highlands to suffer at the hands of the UK’s deeply flawed immigration system.
Canadian Jason Zielsdorf, his wife Christy and their five children watched their dream of running their £200,000 shop and café in Laggan, Invernessshire, come crashing down when they failed to meet the criteria for a business visa. Their crime? Instead of employing two full-time workers for 12 months, they could only afford one.
In May, another family narrowly escaped being deported. Days before they were due to be sent back to Australia from Dingwall, Ross-shire, Gregg and Kathryn Brain were given more time after arguing their son Lachlan’s Gaelic education would suffer.
The Brains have proved the exception to the rule. While dangerous criminals are using legal aid to mount expensive Home Office appeals, the likes of the Zielsdorfs and the Felbers are being forced to search for buyers for the businesses that were supposed to be their future.
The Felbers first visited Scotland on holiday in 1999, during which they hired a car and drove through the Highlands. Mr Felber said: ‘We just fell in love with the area and its slower pace of life – and the weather. I grew up outside of New York and hated its summers of extreme heat and brutally cold winters.
WE got married in 2003 and would come back once or twice a year and see friends and stay in a B&B. Eventually the idea came to us that maybe we could open a similar business here, so we started looking into it. My background was in customer service in the printing field, not hospitality, but we came over a couple of times to look for suitable property and eventually found the Torridon.
‘When we first saw it, it was being used as student accommodation for the local college. It was tired-looking and needed a lot of work but was operational. We sold up our properties in the States and cashed in our pensions. We have no children, so it seemed easy to move.
‘We walked in and knew we could do something special with it. We renovated all the rooms, added one and made them all en-suite. We wanted visitors to come and really enjoy their experience of bed and breakfast which, if you read the reviews, I think we accomplished pretty well.’
Their five-star rating on TripAdvisor bears testament to the Felbers’ hard work and hosting talents. They had bookings almost from the day they opened. The picture is very different now.
‘Next summer was looking like our busiest yet – but we have had to stop taking any further bookings because we don’t know if we’ll be here. We have guests staying the day after Christmas, but that’s it for now. It could cost us thousands of pounds in lost revenue, not to mention all the money we have spent on lawyers. And if we have to go to court to fight this, that will cost more.
‘If we are forced to leave, we have no Plan B. We have nowhere to go. We’ll be sleeping at the airport wherever they send us. It’s sickening. Everything’s gone, our pensions are gone. It’s all in the B&B. This was our last stop and what we planned to do for as long as we could walk.’
The couple arrived on a five-year entrepreneur visa and applied for leave to become permanent residents earlier this year. The sticking point is over visa conditions that required them to take on full-time staff.
They met the requirement when extending their original visa from its initial three-year period. But now they have been told they need to have four employees for 12 months each. The Felbers say the stipulation is unsustainable for a small business like theirs.
‘We can’t find any reference to that in the paperwork we were given at the time,’ said Mr Felber. ‘It is in the latest paperwork for new applicants, but not even the 2015 application for leave to remain contained it. I feel our application should have been judged on the rules in place at the time we applied. This doesn’t seem fair.
‘Now we have been given 30 days to leave from the date of the letter, which is not a lot of time to sell our business.’
What is more, any effort to question the decision will be hampered for the next two weeks when most civil servants will be off enjoying the season’s festivities.
A Home Office spokesman declined to discuss the case this week, saying: ‘All applications are carefully considered on their merits, in line with UK immigration rules and based on evidence provided by the applicant.’
The Felbers’ bleak midwinter stands in stark contrast to efforts being made to stop convicted criminals being deported – at taxpayers’ expense.
Earlier this year, an Iraqi serial childsex offender won the right to stay in Scotland, despite having assaulted three 14-year-old girls in a swimming pool.
Howri Hamad Garib was found guilty of indecent assault in 2004 and served with a deportation order in 2008 – but he launched a taxpayer-funded appeal.
In January, the Home Office decided it will have to let him stay because technically his crimes were not sufficiently serious to merit deporting him.
An estimated £100,000 was spent trying to keep a convicted killer from Albania in the country. Fatjon Kapri was finally deported after a four-year battle.
Convicted Al Qaeda terrorist Baghdad Meziane was allowed to remain in Britain, despite being sentenced to 11 years in jail for raising money for the terrorist organisation.
After being released five years early, he went back to his life in Leicester instead of returning to Algeria, despite the judge at his trial recommending deportation.
One-legged Albanian killer Saliman Barci was smuggled into the UK by his wife. The couple posed as Kosovan refugees to gain British citizenship.