Please let me stay

Published on Saturday 17 October 2009 19:51

ANGELA Faye Smith sat her daughter down, took a deep breath and looked her in the eyes. Then she told her. There were people, she said, who were trying to force mummy to leave the country. She wasn't to worry.

She wasn't to get upset. Everything would be all right. But this was going to be difficult time. "My daughter's eyes welled up," says Smith, recalling the moment. "Of course, I prefaced the conversation with 'this isn't going to happen but…', but it still hurt her to think of that."

In the past week Smith, an American who moved to Arbroath from Virginia with her Scottish husband and their two children in 2007, and left her husband a year ago following the breakdown of their marriage, has watched her life turn inside out. On Monday, 41-year-old Smith received a letter from the Home Office, informing her that her visa application had been turned down and that she must leave Scotland by 13 December, leaving her two children, aged nine and 11, behind. It also told her she couldn't lodge an appeal.

"When I opened the letter I was just shocked," she says, cupping her hands round a mug of tea as she sits on the sofa of her cosy flat near Arbroath harbour, her eyes still wide with a mixture of disbelief and lack of sleep. "You feel the blood draining from your face and the cold sweats beginning, and then of course you cry uncontrollably for a good couple of hours. And then you think, 'OK, what can I do?'"

Every day Smith takes her dog Nicky for a walk through the winding streets of Arbroath. "I stop and chat to people along the way and usually the conversation is, 'Oh, look at the weather'. But for the past few days people have been asking, 'How's the case going?' At least it gives me something different to talk about."

Smith's situation is the latest in a number of recent deportation cases highlighted by Scotland on Sunday this year, including that of American playwright Thomas Legendre, who faces deportation because he does not meet strict earnings criteria; Michael Merillo, another American who was deported from Scotland in April despite being attracted to stay and work in Scotland under the Government's Fresh Talent scheme; and that of Indian Nidhi Singh and her two children, who have been denied the possibility of returning to Scotland after Singh's computer expert husband Nidri died of a heart attack, meaning the family no longer qualified under the government's new points system, which was recently introduced by the Home Office for the whole of the UK.

The stories highlight the failings of a Whitehall bureaucracy that is preventing valued members of Scottish communities living in a country that has become their home.

Smith, whose two children are British citizens, is adamant she has done everything correctly, having gone to her MP, Mike Weir, in April for advice on how to apply for indefinite leave to remain, filling in the form she was advised to, and paying the 820 fee.

"My MP guided me along the way and while he was taking guidance from the Home Office he told me what the Home Office said. We filled out the form they asked us to fill out and paid the fee. And it was that form we got the rejection letter on."

That Smith should leave her children in Scotland is, she says, unthinkable: "They would be forcing me to hide out illegally in this country. I've done everything according to the letter of the law. I told them what happened with the marriage, I was honest with them about everything, yet they're trying to force me to break the law? How does that make sense?

"I've never broken the law in my life. I am an honest person to a fault. I believe in fairness and I want to trust people. But if the Home Office wants to be stubborn they're going to keep seeing my face. I'm not going away until this is resolved."

I am left with the feeling she means it. An articulate woman who dubs herself "the big ginger-haired American who talks funny", Smith works full time for a local electronics firm, volunteers with the local RNLI and plays the violin in the Dundee Symphony Orchestra.

Her work with the lifeboat is one of her favourite aspects of life in Arbroath. "Everywhere I live I volunteer for something, and here the lifeboat just seemed the thing to do because I love the sea. I was on the boat as a crew member but I kept getting sick so they kicked me off, and now I'm a launcher. I have a beeper and if a call goes out I'll jump on my bike and head down there. The kids will come down with me and a lot of the times they'll play on the beach while I'm there."

As she chats, her children's voices float out from one of the bedrooms. She has chosen to keep her son and daughter out of the media and has not named them to journalists, but it is clear that they are constantly at the front of her thoughts. She talks fondly of taking them out on her sea kayak – "they love it! And they have no qualms about jumping into the freezing North Sea either!" – and she is plainly terrified of the effect her possible deportation might have on them. "It would crush them," she says with a shiver. "Just the thought of it."

The fact she is not allowed to appeal the decision until after the 13 December deadline has passed compounds the situation. "Where does that leave me with my children?" she asks. "It does not make sense."

Smith's love affair with Scotland is something she has nurtured for 20 years. She first came to the country in the late 1980s as the wife of a member of the US military. Her first husband, with whom she has two grown sons now aged 18 and 20 who are at university in Maine, was a computer operator for the US armed forces at a military base in Angus.

"We were living in Inverkeilor and towards the end of the tour our marriage broke up. We still got on pretty well but when we moved back to America we moved into separate homes."

She met her second husband, who is from Arbroath, before returning to the US, and after he paid her several visits in the US, they married in 1997, and settled near Washington DC. They decided to return to Arbroath, with their two young children in tow, two years ago, but strains in the marriage were already apparent.

"I already loved Scotland anyway," she says. "I thought, 'If my marriage works, I'd rather it works in Scotland'."

A year later she left him and started divorce proceedings. Despite the marriage breakup, she is still concerned about the parental responsibilities to her children, which now may be under threat.

"How can they try to separate a parent from their child?" she asks. "It's not just the mother issue, we're talking about a father here as well. I will not deny the right of a father towards his children. What if they say, 'OK, you three have to leave,' instead? That still leaves a parent out and that's still bad for the children and still bad for the parent. Either option they are giving us violates the human rights of these children and my ex-husband and me.

"They're not giving us any options to live on the same continent and raise our children. We don't have to raise them in the same household but I would like to raise them in the same town, at least."

Smith and her estranged husband have joint custody of the two children although Smith says it is "no secret" that she will push for full custody of them in the forthcoming divorce proceedings. That she would have to leave her children behind, should she be forced to leave the country on 13 December, seems inevitable, as her husband has the children's passports, and would be unlikely to approve any decision to take them out of the country.

Support for her case within the town is clearly strong. Down at Arbroath harbour, one man in a boiler suit stands hosing down the back of his fish van.

"It's shocking really," he says in a broad Angus accent. "It seems so unfair – she's in the lifeboat, she works, she contributes to the community and she obviously wants to live here. Why can't she?"

A woman out walking her dog round the harbour agrees: "It's unfair, particularly when you think she's got kids at school. She does seem to be getting a lot of local support though."

It's something Tom Miller, who moors a small sailing boat in Arbroath, says is common around these parts: "Because it's fishing community there's a strong community here. People pull together."

An RNLI spokesperson is more cautious on the subject, but says: "Angela is an active and valued member of the lifeboat team in Arbroath and we are concerned for her wellbeing. We hope for her a satisfactory outcome."

While Smith wrestles with Home Office bureaucracy to secure a future for herself and her children in Scotland, other aspects of the immigration and residency rules are coming under increasing scrutiny. Campaigners are waiting for the Home Office to introduce a new points-based system, where residence in Scotland would gain additional points. The government has said it is conscious of the need to attract more people to Scotland to fill skills gaps and counter a falling population. A meeting has been requested with UK immigration minister Phil Woolas to highlight a number of Scottish cases.

Meanwhile Smith's former neighbour, Lynn Nicoll, 41, says she's found it horrifying to watch what her friend is going through. "Angela would be absolutely torn apart if she had to leave her children," she says. "It's every mother's worst nightmare and it would be just so cruel. It's so awful, it almost doesn't feel real."

For Smith, who says she's hardly slept in a week, it has become her only reality, as the 13 December deadline nears. "We just have to keep pushing until one day I get a letter that says, 'Here's your new visa, enjoy your stay,'" she says as a flock of seagulls squawk outside her window. "Everyone who knows me knows I love it here. This is my home."

Counting the human cost of bureaucracy

NIDHI SINGH

An electronics specialist, 34-year-old Nidhi moved to Perth with her husband Navjot in 2004 from India. Navjot, a computer expert, was working on a placement with Norwich Union. Their daughter Kashish, now eight, enrolled in the local primary and their second daughter, Tanisha, was born in Scotland. When Navjot, 35, died of a heart attack in January, months before his family was expected to have been granted permanent residency, Nidhi and her children returned to India as they were told their status as dependants was no longer valid. Despite a campaign, she was told last month she and her children would not be allowed to return to the UK.

MICHAEL MERILLO

Michael Merillo, a 30-year-old from Phoenix, Arizona, came to Scotland to study at Napier University in Edinburgh under the Fresh Talent scheme, introduced to plug the skills gap. He was allowed to stay and work in Scotland for at least two years and was hired by the Scottish Book Trust, where he was said to have excelled as a venue manager. In April, Merillo applied for a three-year extension but was told he did not have enough points and would have to leave within a week. Despite having a masters degree, company sponsorship and funds in his bank account, his 19,000 salary meant Merillo earned too little to qualify. Merillo believes if he had earned just 90p a week more he would have passed the test. He was deported in April.

THOMAS LEGENDRE

American-born novelist and playwright Thomas Legendre came to Scotland with his wife Allyson eight years ago, and they were allowed to stay under the government's Fresh Talent initiative. They have since had two children, Nicole, five, and Callum, three, and Legendre has achieved critical success with Half Life, which was performed by the National Theatre of Scotland. However, Legendre has been told he is not entitled to a residency visa as he has earned less than 32,000 in the correct 15-month period. Legendre is currently deciding whether to return to the US without his family or tear his wife and children away from their settled lives in Edinburgh.