The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
Australian couple trying to secure job to meet Home Office requirements Family ‘hopeful’ over deportation deadline
An Australian family facing deportation say they are still hopeful of remaining in the UK despite a deadline to meet visa requirements which has passed.
Kathryn and Gregg Brain had until midnight last night to secure a job for Mrs Brain that meets Home Office visa requirements, after being granted an extension on their leave to remain.
They moved from Australia to Dingwall in the Highlands with son Lachlan on her student visa in 2011, but a twoyear post-study visa scheme then on offer was later withdrawn by the Government.
Mr Brain said the family have received around a dozen job offers but none that would meet the specifications for a UK tier two visa.
But he said they are hopeful that a 28-day extension can now be secured.
Mr Brain told the Press Association: “As we understand it, you can usually make an application within 28 days of the expiry of your leave period. You lose certain appeal rights because you are late with your application but it can still be done.
“That is the ordinary case, our circumstances are rather complicated by the extra period of grace that has been given to us. We’re operating on the assumption that today is our deadline because we don’t know for certain.
“Tomorrow we’ll be still talking to the lawyers, we’ll be trying to find a way forward and still hoping that the Home Office will see that the honourable course is to do what they said they were going to do when they asked us to come here.”
He added: “We’ve had about a dozen job offers which has been absolutely wonderful, we’ve been quite humbled by it, but unfortunately none that would actually get us over the line with the Home Office for a tier two visa, they are quite stringent in their requirements.”
A Home Office spokesman said: “All visa applications are considered on their individual merits, and applicants must provide evidence to show they meet the requirements of the immigration rules.”
Highland SNP MSP Kate Forbes and SNP MP for Ross, Skye and Lochaber Ian Blackford have written to immigration minister Robert Goodwill in support of the family.
Actor Tom Conti also offered to help, saying he would provide money to the Brain family to ensure they maintain a minimum balance in their bank account in order to meet visa requirements, as he compared the Home Office’s actions to the Soviet Union.