The Home Office has been urged to allow an Australian family facing deportation far more time to find the job they need to secure a permanent visa.
Ian Blackford, the couple’s MP in the Scottish Highlands, wrote to the Home Office on Monday asking ministers to give Kathryn and Gregg Brain, and their seven-year old-son, Lachlan, indefinite leave to remain.
The final deadline for Mrs Brain, an academic, to find a job which satisfies the strict criteria for a tier-two visa expires at midnight on 1 August, putting them at immediate risk of deportation back to Australia.
A job offer with a distillery near their home in Dingwall, near Inverness, was withdrawn unexpectedly last month, leaving the Brains, originally from Brisbane, struggling to find another suitable offer.
Another employer in the Highlands has suggested he could have a post available but has been unable to give confirmation before the Brains’ current grace period expires at midnight.
Blackford has asked Robert Goodwill, the recently appointed immigration minister, to give the family indefinite leave to remain rather than simply extend the grace period which the Home Office granted in May, after a furore about the Brains’ deportation erupted.
A grace period just adds to the pressure, said Blackford, the MP for Ross, Skye and Lochaber. “Giving them the right to stay to find work will remove the pressure and give them the time they need to satisfy the two-tier requirements. These two-tier jobs in the Highlands aren’t ten a penny.”
Blackford said the Home Office’s position on the Brains’ case was perverse since the department had introduced a pilot scheme last week that gave students at six universities extra time to apply for a tier-two visa, after their degrees had finished: a scheme very similar to the previous post-study work visa system.
That was rejected by the Home Office: the pilot scheme only offers a six-month extension, a period far shorter than the several years extra which the Brains had now had. The family has been under threat of deportation after the UK government withdrew the visa scheme intended for students and academics months after the family emigrated from Australia.
They travelled to Scotland in June 2011 under the post-study work visa scheme, hoping that Mrs Brain would find a job after getting a degree at the University of the Highlands and Islands. The Home Office insists it announced in March 2011, three months before the Brains moved to the UK, that the scheme was being withdrawn. The Brains argue they were only told it was being cancelled in 2012, two years after they had been accepted for it.
The family has since had a series of extensions to their temporary visas; Lachlan has become fluent in Gaelic and the Brains say they would be homeless, penniless and without work if they were deported back to Australia. The couple have been banned from working in the UK until they can get a permanent visa.
Mr Brain said: “At this stage we are still very much hoping that an employer will come forward and we’ll be able to continue moving towards a tier-two visa application.
“Of course, what I’d really like is for the Home Office to give us what they promised when we moved here in the first place – a two-year visa with the right to work. We have fulfilled our end of the bargain and we still very much want the Home Office to fulfil theirs.”
The Home Office said it was unable to make any determination about the Brains’ status until after the midnight deadline expires, since technically the family still had the rest of the day to apply for a tier-two visa.
