A SYRIAN woman who came to Scotland as a refugee nine years ago has made a plea to the Home Office to allow her seriously ill father to join her and her sister here before it is too late.
Violet Hejazi fled her home in northern Syria in 2013 as the country was ravaged by the continuing civil war. She said her village Al-Fu’ah was badly hit by various terrorist groups and, just as she was becoming settled in Scotland, she lost contact with her family. Her father Ali, who was then in his 60s, had suffered the first of several strokes. “They [the terrorists] were surrounding the area and there were snipers and shots and explosions every day,” she said. “In 2018, my family was evacuated and moved to another part of Syria.
“During that time, I had already started a family re-union application but I couldn’t provide anything because I couldn’t get in touch with my father to speak to him about anything. There were snipers everywhere but if my father wanted to talk to us, he had to go out on the roof of the building, and that was too dangerous.”
The 28-year-old has now settled in Scotland, along with her sister Simone, and has obtained her Legal Services HND from Glasgow College. She is now taking a Law degree at the University of Glasgow.
Her initial five-year visa expired in 2018 and she has indefinite leave to remain (LTR), which means she is no longer a refugee and cannot normally apply through the family reunion route to bring her parents here.
Now 73, her father has had several strokes, as well as suffering chronic back pain, and his daughter had begun to lose hope.
However, she was researching a law project while at Glasgow College, and came across a ruling from the President of the Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber), Justice Bernard McCloskey, in which he ruled that minors could start family reunion proceedings.
“I was inspired, so we started that application and were hoping to get a decision by March this year, but we are still waiting,” said Hejazi. “We knew we would get a refusal, but the plan was to go for an appeal and probably win it because it’s an application on compassionate grounds, which is outside the rules anyway.
“I managed to borrow some money and fly my father out of Syria in September last year to Erbil in Kurdistan Iraq. He had to attend an interview for the family reunion stuff, and also had to see a proper doctor.
“So I’ve had all the stress and worries having to financially support them during all of that, and also waiting for the Home Office to get back to us has been really difficult.”
Hejazi’s MP, Chris Stephens, the SNP member for Glasgow South West, told The National: “This is one of many cases of family re-union that the Home Office disregards on compassionate grounds, and an illustration of the hostile environment of the UK Government immigration policies. My office and I are doing everything we can to support the family.”
Usman Aslam (below opposite Home Secretary Priti Patel), a senior associate at Mukhtar and Co Solicitors in Glasgow, said that despite the “very perverse” family re-union policy, they have had some success this year.
He added: “That tells us that the Home Office are capable of granting this case which more than meets their compassionate/exceptional criteria. If it is refused, and we are forced to go through the court, the concern is that the medical evidence shows it’s very unlikely that our client’s father will make it to that point.
“In what way could this be more compassionate or exceptional? Our client, the applicant’s daughter, is an inspiration to Scotland. She came as a refugee, split from her family because of war, and is now on course to become a solicitor. It cannot be that it’s in the public interest not to reunite her with her father which is usually cited by the Home Office.”
A Home Office spokesperson said: “All visa applications are carefully considered on their individual merits in accordance with the immigration rules. The Home Office has prioritised Ukraine visa scheme applications in response to the humanitarian crisis caused by the Putin’s barbaric invasion of Ukraine; applications for study, work and family visas are taking longer to process but we are working hard to bring services back into service standard levels.”
