The UK government has been accused of putting a “sticking plaster over a betrayal of trust” after it offered a temporary reprieve to an Australian family who were facing deportation from Scotland on Tuesday.
Following a series of appeals at Holyrood and Westminster, the family’s local MP, Ian Blackford, received a letter from the Home Office minister James Brokenshire on Monday evening stating that Gregg and Kathryn Brain, along with their son, Lachlan, seven, who speaks Gaelic, would be granted leave to remain until 1 August. But he said the parents had been refused the right to work, despite both of them having been offered jobs in the Highlands.
Blackford wrote back to Brokenshire on Wednesday, calling on the UK government to “do the right thing for the Brain family, the local community and the Highlands” by honouring the arrangements that first attracted the family to move to Scotland.
The SNP MP for Ross, Skye and Lochaber said: “The Brain family came to Scotland on the basis that the post-study work visa scheme would allow them the means to continue contributing economically and socially to life in the Highlands – they are not asking for special circumstances, but simply for the arrangements that they moved halfway around the world for to be honoured.”
The Brains decided to move from Australia to Dingwall in the Highlands in 2010, prompted by a Scottish government initiative, backed by the Home Office, aimed at attracting people to live and work in the region. The post-study work visa scheme allowed those studying at a UK university or college – as Kathryn Brain was – the right to work for at least two years after graduating. It was retrospectively cancelled by the UK government in 2012.
Blackford said: “The temporary reprieve handed to Kathryn, Gregg and Lachlan by the Home Office is a sticking plaster over a betrayal of trust.
“I call on James Brokenshire – and his colleagues David Cameron and Theresa May – to urgently reconsider the Brain family’s case and see that they have suffered a grave injustice at the hands of the UK government.”
On hearing of the temporary stay they were granted on Monday, Gregg Brain said the fact that the family’s passports remained confiscated, that their driving licences have been recommended for cancellation, and that their bank accounts may still be frozen led him to the “strong conclusion that we are being set up to fail”.
He told the Guardian: “My fear is that he is publicly announcing that he is giving us every chance but then setting up circumstances in which it becomes impossible for us to meet the requirements.”
An online crowdfunding drive, set up by a friend to support the family with their legal costs, has raised more than £6,000.
