PRESSURE is mounting on the Home Office to reverse its "ludicrous" refusal to grant a visa to the baby daughter of a Pakistani academic in Scotland, despite documents proving she was born in Glasgow.
Critics said the case of 28-year-old PhD student, Arshad, shed light on an "uncaring and discriminate immigration system".
It comes after the Herald revealed how the Home Office rejected an application for a dependent's visa application for Mr Arshad's 10-month-old daughter, Umaima Khan, despite the academic providing a copy of the infant's birth certificate, which states that she was born on December 6 2015 at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Glasgow and names him as her father.
Mr Arshad also provided Umaima's Pakistani-issued passport, which again names Mr Arshad as her father and gives her place of birth as Glasgow, along with his and his wife's visa documentation - which is valid until January 2019.
However, visa clearance for baby Umaima was rejected in a Home Office letter dated August 2, which bizarrely stated that the documents "do not demonstrate that you are related to your stated father or that you were born in the United Kingdom".
The decision has left Mr Arshad facing the next two years living alone in the family's Ibrox flat to complete his doctorate in electrical engineering, while his wife Lubna and baby are stranded thousands of miles away in Pakistan.
Chris Stephens, SNP MP for the Glasgow South-West, has now taken up Mr Arshad's case, which he described as "ludicrous". He said: “I am hoping that the Home Office will take a common sense and humane view and allow Umaima and her mother to be reunited with their dad and husband, and resolve this issue as quickly as possible.”
Mr Arshad and his wife have been living in Scotland, where he is studying at Glasgow Caledonian University, since 2014. They became parents for the first time last year and, in February, Lubna travelled to Pakistan with her newborn daughter to visit family. However, the rejection of her daughter's visa has left her unable to return to her husband in Scotland.
It has also jeopardised the promising academic's hope of staying on in Scotland after his PhD to work in research and engineering.
Vonnie Sandlan, President of NUS Scotland, said the country risked losing much-needed engineering talent as a result.
Mr Sandlan said: “On the face of it, this is a bizarre situation, but also an incredibly worrying one. It strikes to the heart of the uncaring and discriminate immigration system we see too often in the UK. One that treats applicants as nothing more than a tick box exercise or an arbitrary target to be met, rather than the individuals they are, with families, talents and potential that Scotland needs and would want to keep hold of.
"Mr Arshad clearly has clearly already contributed a huge amount, and has much more he can contribute, but we risk losing that potential as a result of this decision."
Mr Arshad said he was hopeful the visa rejection would be reversed, adding that in enquiries to the Home Office yesterday Mr Stephens' office had apparently been told there was a "documentation problem" with Mr Arshad's application.
He said: "I hope things will get better but I'm not sure what's going to happen. I've spoken to [Lubna] three or four times today [wed] and she has everything crossed for the right decision.
"A PhD is something you have to work very hard at, but if you have the support of your family things become easier. But I'm going through a lot of stress right now with all these visa problems."
A spokesman for the Home Office said it was unable to comment on individual cases.
He added: “All visa applications are considered on their individual merits in line with immigration rules.”
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