A family facing deportation back to Ukraine as they fight for their chance to travel to sanctuary in Perthshire are facing another hurdle.
Iryna Vekhtieva, and sons Filip and Timofii, who are sleeping in a church in Galati, Romania, must now travel nearly 250km to a VISA application centre in Bucharest to hand over additional travel documents.
Biometric information may also be required as further proof of ID, which refers to your fingerprints and a digital photograph of your face.
A spokesperson for the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities confirmed the requirements in order to successfully process their UK VISA application.
Martin and Rebekah Hodson of Auchterarder are in touch with Iryna and her sons, who fled the shelling in Mykolaiv to take refuge in the neighbouring EU nation.
The three refugees are hoping to stay with the local couple through the national ‘Homes for Ukraine’ scheme having first made contact with them via friends who run the Galati-based place of worship.
However, having applied for their visas on May 4, Martin last week said Iryna had heard nothing from the Visas and Immigration Department since a generic email acknowledgment on May 10.
Their deadline for access to the UK passed on Saturday, July 9 as the temporary asylum granted by Romania, set at 90 days, expired, meaning they would likely be returned to their war-torn homeland.
However, the need for further documentation may have given Iryna and her boys a reprieve in order to set a clear path to Perthshire.
The Home Office could not confirm when the meeting was set for or if the meeting has been attended.
Iryna has sent a number of messages to Martin in recent weeks, highlighting the scale of their hardship.
She has mentioned her two teens getting sick while staying in the church and her fears over being deported back to Ukraine amidst the ongoing conflict.
She added previously: “Our deadline [for a UK visa] is July 9.
“If we run out of time here we will need to apply for temporary protection and if you don’t get temporary protection then you need to return to Ukraine.”
Martin called it “absurd” that it has taken over two months to process the VISA given their current circumstances.
Ochil and South Perthshire MP John Nicolson has contacted the Visas and Immigration Department of the UK Government several times over the last couple of weeks to alert them to the situation.
A government spokesperson previously stated: “Applications are usually processed in the order they are received, but cases vary in complexity.
“Where we are made aware of an administrative error we also act swiftly to ensure people have the documents they need to travel to the UK.”
