THE man who has offered a job to an Australian mother battling to keep her family in the UK has confirmed to The National that he will continue to sponsor her application for a visa.
Helicopter pilot, farmer and green energy advocate John Mckenzie aims to make history with the new GlenWyvis Distillery, as the first community-owned, renewables-powered facility of its kind.
He has offered Kathryn Brain a job as its history curator and senior administrator of its community share offer.
Kathryn and husband Gregg, along with their seven-year-old son Lachlan, have been living in Dingwall for almost five years. But, the post-study work visa they had set their hope on was scrapped by the Home Office the year after they arrived.
Their stay has been extended until August 1, and the Home Office has said it would consider any application they made within that time.
Yesterday, the couple said they were “heartened” after meeting an immigration lawyer in Glasgow who has now taken up their case.
GlenWyvis Distillery is more than half-way to its £1.5 million crowdfunding target, and Mckenzie said Kathryn was ideal for the job he had offered her.
He said: “There’s no one else with a degree in Scottish history and archaeology in Dingwall.
“The GlenWyvis project goes back to the 1690s, to Robbie Burns and the Jacobites, so it has history embroiled in it to the core.
“The long-term plan is that we are looking to tie the Culloden Visitor Centre with a new visitor centre in Dingwall. We want to get those people across the bridge to Dingwall and that’s why we’ve designed the visitor centre at this stage, but we obviously have to have the distillery first.
“I have the site for the centre and I’ve designed it, and depending on how much we raise, we can buy it now. But I want to set Kathryn to task on that.
“We thought she would be allowed to start work straight away, but this is such a bizarre situation where they’re not allowed to earn.”
He added: “The result of discussions I’ve had with the experts is that we will sponsor her as GlenWyvis history curator and community share offer senior administrator.
“We’re going to continue with the sponsorship and we think the visa could be turned round quite quickly.”
In an exclusive video interview with The National, Kathryn told how they had gone through a lot of sleepless nights.
She said: “We’re having to deal with so much emotionally and physically each day and you feel like you could just crash out at night, but we just lie there and look at the ceiling, there’s so much going on.”
“We’ve kind of run out of emotional responses,” added Gregg. “The ups and downs have been so extreme over the last few weeks that I don’t think we’ve got a lot of tears left.
“Even if (immigration minister James) Mr Brokenshire were to hand us the visas and I had them in my hand, I’m not sure how I’d respond.”
He said their decision to come to Scotland – under an initiative to boost the population of the Highlands – had been carefully planned.
“When we applied for the visa and there was this post-study work visa available at the end of that, it was a six- or seven-year plan, depending on the sort of degree.
“Three or four years of study then a two-year visa on the end of it, so you’re having to plan years ahead.
“So for the immigration minister to tell us now that immigrants should never assume that the visas that were available to them at the time of their initial entry to the UK will continue to be viable options in future years – that was not in the promotional literature six years ago.”
Kathryn said the level of support they have had has been quite humbling: “The way we’ve been treated and supported by everybody is almost like we’ve spent our whole lives here. It brings a lump to the throat every time I think about it.”
Both say the visa row has not changed their view of the UK: “Nobody’s come up to us and said ‘it’s time you got out’ – that’s only come from the Home Office.”
A beaming Lachlan said he was chuffed when he got to meet Nicola Sturgeon at Holyrood.
He said: “I was very happy when I got to meet her. I enjoy my work at school and all my friends are here and I really want to stay here.”
Asked what sort of job he would like when he left school, he said: “I would like to be normal person… I would like to be a worker.”
And we hope that it will be in Scotland.
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