‘WE’RE over the moon to be honest. My son was extremely happy. He woke up at six in the morning and started getting ready to go back to school.”
Young Sebastian’s eagerness to get back in the classroom was perhaps unsurprising, considering he and his father had been trapped 2500 miles away from their home in Nairn for a full month.
The eight-year-old was stuck in Turkey for weeks with his father, Ali Abunejmeh, who was blocked from boarding a plane back to the UK – where he has lived for the last 15 years.
Ali, a nurse for NHS Highland, had settled status and all the documents which the Home Office had told him he would need to fly when he took his son to visit family in Jordan – leaving mum Jana and siblings Celine and Jacob behind due to delays in the UK’s passport processing system.
However, his “view and prove” app – which Tory government guidance from April 2022 says is acceptable evidence of leave to live in the UK – was ignored by officials, and he was left struggling to prove his right to return to his home.
“My son was crying and they just left us without giving us any advice or anything,” Ali told the Sunday National. “Imagine if I didn’t have any back-up money with me. We’d have ended up homeless in the streets, I’m not lying.
“Even the British Embassy, they said they are not dealing with people who are resident in [the UK], they are only dealing with holders of British passports.
“Why are we having embassies in different countries when they cannot even advise their own residents?”
Ali added a warning: “If the Home Office doesn’t look into this case then I think unfortunately a lot of people are going to end up like me.”
And he has already been proven right. After Ali’s story was told by The National, and later the BBC, a South African national called Yvonne Dzhantov reached out to him on Twitter.
Yvonne is stuck in Bulgaria, having been barred from returning to the UK despite her husband Krasimir and two young children being allowed to fly. She has settled status, and the Home Office’s “view and prove” app to show it, but that was deemed insufficient to allow her to return home.
“It’s horrible, horrible,” Yvonne told the Sunday National. “I’ve been crying. You know when you think you’re in a nightmare and you need to wake up? I feel like that. It’s the worst feeling.
“I showed them the [view and prove app] code but they said: ‘no, you still can’t go’. I said, ‘but I’ve got a family, I’ve lived there for five years’, I said to them ‘I can show you my tax returns, I’ve got a business in the UK’, but they weren’t interested. They didn’t care to look at anything.”
Yvonne, who lives in Essex with her husband and daughters Stefany, 12, and Victoria, eight, also fell victim to unclear and contradictory guidance from the Home Office.
“I tell you now, my business is to help people plan,” she said. “I plan everything. I’m organised as can be. This is not something that I would just do, that’s what they don’t get. I would have never come.”
A Home Office spokesperson said, as they did for Ali, that “any non-EEA nationals granted settled status must carry their Biometric Residence Card (BRC) when travelling abroad and this should be in date”.
However, guidance online says that a BRC is not necessary, and that the “view and prove” app will suffice – the exact same pitfall that trapped Ali in Turkey.
Also like Ali, Yvonne has been forced to apply for a visa to return to the country in which she already has the right to live.
“Why must I apply for a visa to return to my own country?” she asks. The question is a good one.
When Ali’s case arose, a spokesperson from the campaign group the3million said: “It is unacceptable that people are facing significant emotional and financial consequences, unable to return to their homes in the UK because of a lack of clear, consistent communication.
“We are calling for the Home Office to further clarify to airlines that they must allow passengers to board their flights when they can prove their status digitally through the Home Office’s own ‘view and prove’ system.”
The Home Office spokesperson added that they would “be in touch with Ms Dzhantov”.
