A DEVASTATED family of seven have arrived back in Canada to rebuild their lives after being forced to give up their business and home in Scotland because of immigration rules.
The Zielsdorfs, who ran the only grocery store in a tiny Highland village, left the UK after being “treated like garbage” by the UK Home Office.
Despite living in Scotland since 2008 and investing about £300,000 in Laggan Stores, they fell foul of immigration rules and had to close the shop, which was familiar to millions of TV viewers as McKechnie’s in the BBC series Monarch of the Glen.
Jason and Christy Zielsdorf told The National they had given up trying to deal with Home Office bureaucrats and had taken the difficult decision to go back to Canada voluntarily rather than suffer the trauma of a forced deportation.
“What’s the point in dealing with these people anymore?” said Zielsdorf. “We’ve already committed eight-and-a-half years of our lives and upwards of £50,000 in fees just to be treated like garbage.” He said the Home Office had not even given them enough time to find a buyer for the business.
"I had people lined up to take the shop over so we could keep serving the community and all the tourists and visitors that come in to enjoy the Highlands, but that fell through at the last minute, so we had to close on Good Friday,” he said.
Their arrival in Canada comes as Americans Russell and Ellen Felber take their visa case to a judicial review at the Court of Session in Edinburgh.
They moved to Inverness nearly six years ago and, like the Zielsdorfs, invested heavily – about £400,000 – transforming a dingy building into the Torridon Guest House.
The Felbers had extended their first visa successfully, but when they applied for a second extension it was refused because officials decided to implement a rule change retrospectively. A week before Christmas they received their notice to quit the UK, a delivery that was responsible for Ellen being admitted to hospital due to stress.
SNP Ian Blackford said: “This has all the imagery of the Clearances, with people being forced out of the Highlands against their will.”
Zielsdorf said his family had no other viable option but to leave as they could have spent tens of thousands of pounds more over any number of years “just to get to the point the Felbers are at, where the Home Office can come up with any trumped up reason that they want and they have to fight them in judicial review”.
“I’m sorry, but if you have to take them to court for them to obey their own rules and be decent at a common sense level what is the point?” he said.
“We were short by half a point in that we were required to have two full-time positions for 12 months in the three-year window of our entrepreneurial visa and we were only able to make one in the end.
“That meant we were five-and-a-half points out of six, but the Home Office went out of their way not just to be robotic or pedantic, but to make our application look worse than it was.”
A Home Office spokesman said: “All visa applications are carefully considered on their individual merits, in line with the UK immigration rules and based on evidence provided by the applicant.”
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