BBC Devon political reporter
BBCAn 11-year-old boy from Exeter who was told by the Home Office he would have to move to his native Brazil should now be able to stay in the UK after a bureaucratic battle.
In its original email to Guilherme, the Home Office said moving to Brazil after six years in England “may involve a degree of disruption to family life” but this was “proportionate to the legitimate aim of maintaining effective immigration control”.
Guilherme’s parents, an NHS nurse and a university lecturer who came to the UK legally with their children in 2019, said they had feared what it might also mean for their other son Luca, eight.
The Home Office has now agreed to “exceptionally reconsider” the family’s case.
The boys’ father, Hugo, who has indefinite leave to remain in the UK, had appealed for the same visa for his sons.
A Home Office email addressed to primary school pupil Guilherme in June said: “I am satisfied that there are no serious or compelling reasons to grant you settlement.
“I am satisfied that you could return to Brazil and continue your education in Brazil where you would have the option to attend an English-speaking school.”
Speaking before the Home Office reconsidered her family’s case, the boys’ mother, Ana, said: “In the beginning it was like the floor just opened for me – I couldn’t understand what it meant”.
She said her sons told her they did not want to go to Brazil and they wanted to keep their friends at a school they enjoyed.
Ana said: “We pay taxes every month and we do everything correctly and then suddenly we have this with our children – the most precious thing in our lives.
“It just makes you feel like nothing.”
Hugo and Ana separated in 2022 and they said the separation – and their different stages in the immigration process – had led to the issues with the Home Office.
The family arrived in the UK in 2019 with Hugo on a skilled worker visa due to his job as a a senior lecturer in computer science at the University of Exeter.
In 2024 he was granted indefinite leave to remain.
Ana gained a skilled worker visa in 2022 after starting work as a nurse at the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital but will only be eligible for indefinite leave to remain after five years.
The original Home Office email said both parents should be granted settlement at the same time, or be settled or a British citizen, unless one parent has sole responsibility for the children.
The Home Office said it would refund the cost of the original visa applications – about £3,000 per child – and allow a new application for both children as dependants of a skilled worker.
Hugo spoke of his huge relief at the decision but said changes needed to be made.
He said the experience had been “mentally draining and exhausting” but he and his family were now “excited for the future”.
He added: “The most appalling issue was the fact they wrote a very tough and somewhat threatening letter to a young child.
“The other issue is their rules don’t seem to be fit for purpose in a scenario where you have different family arrangements.”
Steve Race, the Labour MP for Exeter, argued the family’s case with the Home Office and said there were “lessons to be learned” from the family’s situation.
“When you’ve got cases that are slightly more nuanced, slightly more complicated, the Home Office needs to have processes in place to make sure they do look at what’s going on with the family in the round and they don’t put families through this process with all of the fear, stress and concern this has meant,” he said.
Race said the country needed “safe and secure borders” but also needed to treat families “who are here legally and correctly” in “the right way and with respect”.
The Home Office declined to comment on the case or the issues raised by the MP.
