A British man is fighting to bring his Chinese wife into the UK after winning an appeal against the immigration authorities’ decision to refuse her visa application.
Although Steve Bearns was successful in the appeal, his wife Mary Zu has still not been granted the visa to return to the UK to live with her husband. The Home Office said that she was not allowed to re-enter the UK because she had left the country when her application was initially rejected.
The couple, who married in China six years ago and have a three-year-old son, had attempted to change Mary’s family visa into a spouse visa when it ran out in August last year. When the application was turned down, she returned to China with UK-born son Ryan, who is now spending half the year with his mother and half the year with his father in Wallingford, Oxfordshire.
Steve told the BBC: “For six months he doesn't have a daddy, and for the last five months his mummy has just been a face in the computer.”
The couple have been told they must launch another appeal before Mary can receive her spouse visa and return to live in Britain, even though the family won their first appeal. A second appeal could take a year and a half.
Steve’s Conservative MP Ed Vaizey is supporting the family and branded the Home Office’s decision as a “scandal”.
He said: “They've been treated shamefully by the immigration services, it's a complete scandal what's happened to them.”
Mary said the family met all the immigration rules and called on the authorities to look at the documents they had supplied.
The Home Office said: “All applications are considered on their individual merits and in accordance with immigration rules.”