A SCOTTISH postman has attacked the “stress and misery” that UK immigration policy causes after his Filipino wife of seven years was told that authorities were “not adequately satisfied” that she could speak English to a satisfactory level – despite the fact that she had previously taught the language to primary school children.

David and Christine Reid had to jump through hoops to satisfy Home Office requirements, but he said the biggest insult came when she got a letter saying: “We are not adequately satisfied that you have proven you can speak English to a level we are happy with.”

He told The National: “It was ridiculous. She has an English diploma from university in Cebu and previously taught it to Korean businessmen and then primary school children.

“Our daughter Mutya, who’s five, is a year ahead of her class at primary school because her mum’s been teaching her.”

At a subsequent English proficiency test in Glasgow, Christine was asked what was the name of her street “in such a degrading way, like speaking to a two-year-old”, said David.

“Once it was concluded, they refused to release the test result as there was a rip on one of the blank pages of her passport and they said ‘we are not adequately satisfied you are who you say you are’.

“We had no proof she could speak English and finally they required proof that our two children were living with us at our home, meaning we needed letters from doctors and schools to prove everything.”

The couple met in 2009 in New Zealand, where she was an English teacher registered with the country’s teachers’ council.

The following year the couple travelled to the UK, where she applied for a visa, and it was here David said the trouble started. “It was delayed as the UK Government’s Border Agency did not believe we were married, even though we provided the official marriage document,” he said.

“So we had to get it counter-signed by the New Zealand government just for them to believe it.”

Christine was allowed into the UK and the couple made their home in Falkirk. For a time, they lived in peace until six weeks before her visa came up for renewal – and when an accident had left Christine’s mother in need of an operation. The couple used the money they had saved for the visa to pay for the treatment in the Philippines, which has no NHS.

Scottish father tells of his family's 'week of hell' after his wife was told she would be deported

“We enlisted the help of an immigration solicitor in Glasgow,” said David, “and he advised us to write to the Home Office as the Border Agency had been made redundant by that point. He told us to list the issues we faced and state that we were only asking for some time to gather the necessary funds to pay for the full visa.

“We sent the letter on a Thursday in September 2012 and by the Monday my wife was receiving calls and letters telling her to apply for a visa or leave, to such a degree that she felt the enforcement agency would knock down the door and remove her.

“It got to such a point that I wrote to the Home Office complaining of her treatment and within a few days I received a call from the manager of the then public inquiry office in Glasgow, which is now closed.

“I had been advised that my wife could not be deported under section 8 of the Human Rights Act as it would be in breach of our then one-year-old daughter’s human rights to be deprived of her mother.

“The manager replied with such anger, stating simply ‘the UK Government reserves the right to remove yourself Mr Reid, your daughter and your wife if it breaches your daughter’s human rights to be deprived of her mother from the UK’, at which point she hung up.”

The couple scraped the funds together, and the extension they applied for kept them in limbo for a further 18 months. Christine has been granted leave to remain through renewals over the past four years, but David worries about the future.

“We live in constant limbo and fear of when your next visa extension is due. With no legal aid and solicitors asking for £500 to just look at a case, it’s now a matter of the immigrants versus the Government and it’s a Government determined to hold all the cards.”

Nadia, a PhD student from India who is on holiday in Scotland, is also critical of the “deport first, appeal later” strategy. She has an engineering degree from India and a Masters in IT Management from the University of South Wales.

In January last year immigration officers raided her London home while she was out. Two days later she was arrested in a city street and held for 20 hours as an illegal immigrant.

“I was asked to take the Test of English for International Communication but I said I didn’t have to take it because my Masters was studied in English. I also told them my visa application was pending so I had every right to be here,” said Nadia.

“I have spent more than £30,000 on my studies in the UK, but I’ve even had phone calls from people saying they had a deportation order for me to be sent back to India.”

By the time The National went to press last night, the Home Office had not responded to our request for comment.