{"id":1210,"date":"2023-07-09T10:30:31","date_gmt":"2023-07-09T10:30:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/gregrussell.scot\/?p=1210"},"modified":"2023-07-07T13:50:17","modified_gmt":"2023-07-07T13:50:17","slug":"the-former-refugee-who-took-on-the-home-office-and-won","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregrussell.scot\/?p=1210","title":{"rendered":"The former refugee who took on the Home Office … AND WON!"},"content":{"rendered":"

A FORMER Syrian refugee in Scotland has won her battle to be reunited with her father after succeeding in an appeal against the Home Office\u2019s refusal under family union rules.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Violet Hejazi, who has been in Scotland for a decade, last year pleaded with the department \u00a0to allow her seriously ill father to be reunited with her and Simone, her sister, in Scotland before it is too late.<\/p>\n

Continuing civil war forced the family to flee their home in northern Syria in 2013 after their village was ravaged by terrorist militia. She lost contact with her father, Ali, and stepmother as she became settled in Scotland. Her father is in his seventies and has suffered a series of strokes.<\/p>\n

Violet\u2019s own initial five-year visa expired in 2018 and she has indefinite leave to reman (ILR), which means she is no longer a refugee and could not apply to bring her parents here through the family reunion route.<\/p>\n

However, she has a Legal Services HND from Glasgow College and is studying law at Glasgow University and it was through her studies that she found a ruling from the President of the Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) which said that minors could start family reunion proceedings.<\/p>\n

That inspired her to pursue her own case, and she had been expecting a refusal in March last year. Now, 16 months on, the First-Tier Tribunal has found in her favour and she can bring her parents to Scotland.<\/p>\n

Violet said it had been a long battle, but she was relieved that it was over: \u201cI didn\u2019t know what to say. I received the news over the phone and it was unreal. It actually took me a few days to digest the fact that we had won and there\u2019s nothing more we need to prepare, in terms of legal arguments.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m actually quite proud of myself because if I had not paid attention to the details, we wouldn\u2019t be where we are today.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cIt could take up to three weeks for my father\u2019s visa to be implemented and from that day we have 30 days to travel. So it will be maybe two or three months before they\u2019re in Scotland.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said there are no direct flights from Kurdistan Iraq, where her parents have been living, and there are more hurdles to jump regarding passports, visas and her father\u2019s ill health, but she has managed to give him the news.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m just a little bit worried about the timescale and how fast we can get things done.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn the day [of the ruling] I shared the news. We got that on the 14th of June and the 15th was my 10th anniversary in Scotland, so it was a very special week.<\/p>\n

\"\"\u201cI phoned him and he was very overwhelmed. I shared the news with my stepmother and she was happy but told me my father\u2019s been very unwell for two days. He\u2019s having fever attacks, which has been happening for the past year and there\u2019s no doctor who can find out why.\u201d<\/p>\n

Violet did manage to speak to her father a few days later, and once he was convinced that he hadn\u2019t been dreaming in the earlier call, he was delighted.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe can barely move and can only speak for five minutes and then he\u2019s tired. But that day, they actually went to a nearby park to go out for some fresh air and have a wee celebration. They were over the moon.\u201d<\/p>\n

Violet\u2019s own lawyer, Usman Aslam, a senior associate at Mukhtar & Co Solicitors in Glasgow,\u00a0said the family reunion process is there for refugees who have fled their home countries and been separated from their families, and this ruling extends its reach.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhilst the rules generally only allow spouses and children, we all know that family also means parents, it also means siblings, grandparents, or anyone that you consider family.<\/p>\n

\u201cViolet and her parents have had to suffer around two years unnecessarily, going through a bureaucratic nightmare, at a time when the Tory Government are trying to sell to the public that family reunion is a safe route.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy is that the applications are usually refused then having to cost the taxpayers a fortune for court appeals?\u00a0 What is more concerning is that the Home Office had more than one opportunity to review matters, instead, we were advised that the case was without merit.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe public, and more importantly the court has clearly taken the opposite view to the Home Office.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said the system was in need of a complete overhaul, and urged to Home Office to engage with layers.<\/p>\n

\u201cViolet is a symbol of what refugees can achieve.\u00a0 She fled war, then learned the language when she came to Scotland, won several awards at college, now on route to becoming a solicitor.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll she asked was to see her parents again. We are delighted with the result and welcome the judge\u2019s decision and we will continue the fight for those facing oppressive immigration rules.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A FORMER Syrian refugee in Scotland has won her battle to be reunited with her father after succeeding in an appeal against the Home Office\u2019s refusal under family union rules. Violet Hejazi, who has been in Scotland for a decade, last year pleaded with the department \u00a0to allow her seriously ill father to be reunited […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1212,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/gregrussell.scot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/07\/Violet-Hejazi.jpg?fit=720%2C1280&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregrussell.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregrussell.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregrussell.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregrussell.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregrussell.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gregrussell.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1210\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregrussell.scot\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1212"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregrussell.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregrussell.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregrussell.scot\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}