Inverness MP slams Whitehall 'shambles' in case of soldier's visa plea
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The Home Office has been labelled “incompetent” over its handling of a review into why a serving British soldier’s daughter was refused a visa to come and live in the UK.
That is after it lost the file of the review which was probing why Denis Omondi’s visa application for his daughter Ann (14) was rejected on the grounds he had not visited her often enough despite serving in 3 Scots.
The documents were eventually found, but only after MP Drew Hendry again asked a question in parliament, having previousl raised the case at Prime Minister’s Questions a month ago.
At that time Prime Minister Theresa May agreed to have Home Secretary Sajid Javid look into the case while thanking Mr Omondi for his service.
The soldier’s situation was complicated due to the fact he joined the army as a commonwealth soldier from Kenya but only found out about his daughter Ann in 2012 when she was eight.
Since then he has visited her every year as often as he could and only decided to bring her to the UK when it became clear that her welfare and happiness depended on it due after her mother remarried – the visa was rejected last November.
Mr Omondi said: “It is a feeling of being betrayed because I have done everything I should, I have been a law abiding citizen, I have not broken any laws since I came here.
“I just feel like I have not been recognised for what I am doing because I fight for this country for years and it is like my family are not welcome.”
His wife Shelagh agreed saying: “It is such a small, simple thing to ask compared to what Denis has done which is basically to write a blank cheque with his life to serve in the army.”
On the issue of the Home Secretary’s office losing the paper work of the review for some days, he said: “I am just worried completely because when I talk to my daughter she asks me what is going on with the visa and I don’t want to cause her any distress.”
Mr Hendry has hit out at the government’s treatment of Mr Omondi describing it as an “absolute shambles” and called on the Home Office to “do the right thing.”
Fearing that the case was not being taken “seriously” Mr Hendry called the Home Secretary’s office only to be told the file had gone missing. He addressed the issue at Scotland Questions on Wednesday by asking Scottish Secretary David Mundell to get “personally involved in this travesty”– the intervention appeared to work as the file was located the same day.
Speaking afterwards, Mr Hendry said: “We were suspicious that they were not taking the case seriously but we had no idea that they were so incompetent as to lose the paperwork.
“We will continue to raise the issue after I put Scottish Secretary David Mundell on the spot in addition to the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary. It is the right thing to do, it is the sensible thing to do, to get Ann back with her family and to draw a conclusion to this sorry travesty once and for all.”
