TIME is running out for two Syrian toddlers to reunite with their father in Scotland – because the Home Office can’t say where their paperwork is.
Unless their travel documents reach Lebanon by Tuesday, little Leya Alnajjar, two, and her one-year-old brother Fahed face deportation back to Syria with their mother Rawan Alshaban, 26.
All three of them have permission to travel to Scotland to start a new life with hairdresser dad Jalal Alnajjar, 32.
He came to Clydebank last summer after being granted the right to join other family members.
As soon as he arrived he made the formal applications to bring his children too.
It’s been six months since the bids were submitted, three months since they were granted and almost two months since the Home Office said it had dispatched the paperwork needed to allow the children to enter the UK.
But nothing’s arrived at the Beirut Visa Application Centre and officials say the tracking information needed to determine where the vital documents are – something that’s now commonplace on orders and deliveries – is unavailable.
The family’s solicitors have urged the department to act and either find out where the docket is or cancel it and issue new papers in time.
It’s not just that they’re desperate to be reunited, it’s also to avoid the young siblings and their mother being sent back to Syria, because their Lebanese visa will run out on Tuesday.
Rawan’s UK visa will expire at the start of next month.
If those deadlines aren’t met, the young family will have to start all over again, potentially losing another six months or more. That would leave them living in limbo, poverty and danger – whether in Syria or Lebanon.
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The Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) currently advises against all travel to Syria and says British nationals in Syria should leave by any practical means. Its guidance says the situation there “remains volatile and dangerous owing to a decade of ongoing conflict and insecurity”, Daesh conducts regular attacks and local security situations “can deteriorate into armed clashes without warning”.
Meanwhile, it recommends against “all but essential travel” to almost everywhere in Lebanon due to “ongoing instability” as a result of the severe economic crisis and deteriorating security. Crime is up, there are terror fears and basic commodities are increasingly hard to come by. Several people died in bloody violence in October in scenes that took on a sectarian element amidst anger over the government response to the devastating explosion in the port of Beirut in 2020.
Yet Leya and Fahed remain there despite having a warm and safe home to come to in West Dunbartonshire.
Jalal has been checking for his family’s documents every day. He told The National: “My wife is alone with our children. The situation in Lebanon is so bad; there is no electricity, no gas, there is nothing. My children are sick all the time because of the cold. Everything is very expensive now because the amount of materials available in Lebanon is very short. Lebanon now is a country of war and unsafe to live in.”
The National asked the Home Office what has caused the delay, why there is no tracking information, what it has done to expedite delivery and whether or not new forms could be sent electronically to beat the clock.
It didn’t answer those questions but sent a stock response about the state’s history of supporting refugees and its New Plan for Immigration.
Jalal’s MP Martin Docherty-Hughes said the Home Office “should have acted in a timeous manner to help this family reunite”.
He went on: “The situation my constituent and his family have been left in is not acceptable. I will continue to work on their behalf despite the impending deadline.”
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