The Home Office has refused a visit visa for the father of the chief executive of the Scottish Refugee Council so that he can see his son receive an honorary doctorate.
Sabir Zazai, the 2019 winner of the Lord Provost’s award for human rights, is receiving the doctorate from the University of Glasgow for his services to civil society over the last 20 years in the UK. But, in a decision branded “nonsensical”, the Home Office has refused to allow his father to attend the ceremony.
According to a personal email written to Zazai on 13 May by the private secretary to the director general of UKVI, the Home Office will not let his father attend the ceremony on 11 June because it doesn’t believe he would return home to Afghanistan.
“I feel that I’m in a high security prison where I’m not allowed family visits,” said Zazai. “I also feel that because of my background as an asylum seeker, my daughters, both British citizens, are being denied their right to a family life because they’re not allowed to meet their grandfather.”
Zazai is a personal friend of the bishop of Coventry and chair of City of Sanctuary UK. The case of his father has been taken up by numerous MPs and public figures. Two MPs have separately raised the issue as a point of order in the House of Commons.
Labour’s Ged Killen asked a question about the issue in the House on Wednesday. He said: “UKVI staff are working under enormous pressure and mistakes happen, but in this case there simply isn’t the time for mistakes, that is why I asked the home secretary to intervene and I am extremely disappointed he has ignored that request.
“Under the Tories, the Home Office is hostile and suspicious, they assume the worst in everyone and there is very little compassion and absolutely no ownership of mistakes or incorrect decisions,” he added. “I will continue to explore all available options to have this nonsensical decision overturned.”
Zazai is also supported by the SNP’s Patrick Grady, who raised a parliamentary question earlier this month when Zazai’s father was first refused. Carol Monaghan MP, also of the SNP, has written to Caroline Nokes, minister of state for immigration, to say she is astounded by the decision.
It is not the first time Mohammad Zahir Zazai has been refused permission to visit his son by the Home Office. He was prevented from attending Zazai’s graduation from the University of Coventry in November 2013 and from attending his 40th birthday and his granddaughter’s fifth birthday.
The father has, however, been granted visitor visas in the past, both for the UK and for other countries around the world, as have other family members. It is understood that they have always kept to the conditions imposed.
The refusal by the Home Office is, said Monaghan, “riddled with errors”, for example, claiming Zazai’s father comes from Pakistan instead of Afghanistan, had no family in Afghanistan and wrongly claiming he admitted to having no income or assets.
A Home Office spokesperson said: “We are urgently looking into this case and will be in touch with the applicant in due course.”
