A CANADIAN family in the Highlands who are locked in a visa battle with the Home Office have been summoned to a meeting with the department next week in Glasgow.
Jason and Christy Zielsdorf have invested more than £250,000 in Laggan Stores, which became known to millions of TV viewers as McKechnie’s in the BBC series Monarch of the Glen.
They and their five children will have to make the four-and-a-half-hour journey from Laggan to Glasgow by public transport, after the Home
Office revoked Jason’s driving licence.
Last night he hit out at the UK Government’s one-size-fits-all immigration policy.
He said: “When you are this side of the immigration track, you are treated as the ne’er-do-well that you must be, because they all must be – that’s why you’re falling foul of the
Home Office.”
The family arrived in Scotland eight years ago under a student visa, which was switched to a post-study work visa when Jason completed his Masters degree at St Andrews University.
He subsequently obtained a three-year entrepreneur visa in 2012 and, after buying the Laggan shop in 2014, applied for an extension last year.
The Home Office rejected it, claiming it failed to meet six requirements, one of which stated they had to employ two full-time staff at the minimum wage or higher.
This did not take into account the seasonal nature of work in such a remote area.
Jason has said they have no option but to return to Canada, but he is unwilling to do so without selling their thriving business, which is also a community lifeline.
The family had leave to remain until the end of September, but had heard nothing from the Home Office for more than a month, until yesterday’s letter summoning them to a “family removals conference”.
“I hadn’t heard from them for 34 days, but now I have and it’s ‘Come down and see us, bring these documents, those documents and all your family’.
“We would have to get a taxi big enough for the seven of us, so we’ll have to get one out of Aviemore which is a half hour away and costs around £70.
“We’d take the train down, come back by train and get another taxi back home.”
He added: “At this point if there’s no changing their minds and I can’t see an easy way for them to do that without backtracking and undoing previous decisions, then I want to be able to sell the business first so that we can walk out of here dignified and under our own steam.
“We’ll still leave voluntarily, but I don’t know what the Home Office expects an entrepreneur to do with their £250,000 investment – it’s not a work visa, or a student visa where you can quit and disappear.”
SNP MP Drew Hendry, the member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey, has been fighting the family’s case.
He told The National last night that he’d be contacting Immigration Minister Robert Goodwill to find out more about the family’s meeting.
“I’ll be in touch with the Home Office to ask why the family have been ordered to appear at this meeting with absolutely no flexibility concerning how they will manage to travel down from Laggan to Glasgow.
“Clearly I would like the Government to give some good news to the family that would ensure their valuable position within the community is not put in jeopardy.”
A Home Office spokesperson said: “All applications are carefully considered on their individual merits, in line with the UK immigration rules and based on evidence provided by the applicant.”
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