Dubai: An expat family of three were denied an urgent British visa to attend the funeral of their brother, who is a British citizen for over 20 years, on the grounds that they might be trying to “immigrate”.
Sara Shaikhuddin, a Sudanese expatriate based in Dubai, told Gulf News of her ordeal: “My elder brother, Motaz, 50, who was a UK citizen and had lived in London for the last 25 years, suddenly died due to a severe asthma attack on September 21. He has left behind his six-month pregnant wife and a toddler son.”
The family applied for a visa to attend the funeral in UK. “The three of us — my mother, Zuhoor Suliman, and younger brother, Mohammad, and I — applied for an urgent visa on September 28, to pay our last respects and comfort his pregnant widow and son. We spent Dh12,000 on the urgent processing fee and provided all the documents, including the death certificate and the address of the cemetery where the burial rites were to be carried out,” she said.
Shaikhuddin said they were informed that an urgent visa would be issued within 24 hours. “We applied on a Wednesday, and the matter stretched into Thursday and then, citing the weekend, we were finally given a reply on Sunday evening at the end of the fifth day.”
The reply startled the family. “The application came back with the ‘rejected’ stamp saying that we might be trying to ‘immigrate’. My brother was a senior manager of a company [in the UK] and he could have sponsored us, but we never tried to do this while he was alive, so why would we do this now?” said Shaikhuddin.
Shaikhuddin, who was married to a British citizen and is divorced, has a child with a British passport but she lives in the UAE said she has never entertained the idea of migrating to the UK. “We are seven siblings and are well settled in Sharjah. We have an emotional connect to the UAE which is home to us. My father is buried here. My older sister, who has a British passport, chooses to live here too, so why would we want to do something like this in an hour of crisis?” says a distraught Shaikhuddin.
She says she has written to the British Embassy stating her case and explaining to them how crucial it is for them to be able to pay their last respects to their brother. “My brother was a father figure to us as my father died when we were young. His wife is pregnant and distraught by his sudden demise. We simply want to say our last goodbyes to him,” she said.
When Gulf News contacted the British Embassy, a spokesperson of the visa team of the embassy in Dubai said: “The Home Office is not able to comment on individual applications. All applications are considered on their individual merits in line with the UK’s immigration rules. In order to obtain a visa for the UK, applicants must demonstrate that they meet the UK’s immigration rules.”