Imagine trying to get a replacement passport after your old one goes missing, only to be told that no record of you exists. Your home country says it cannot trace you; you are effectively stateless, with nowhere to call home.

This is what Kate has endured for the past decade. Her nightmare began when she had to reapply for her passport because it was lost by the Home Office. When the 36-year-old, from a former Soviet state that she prefers not to specify, tried to renew her UK student visa in 2008, she sent off the passport and it never came back.

The Home Office initially said it should be returned to her in three months, but years passed and she heard nothing. It took four years for the Home Office to explain that it had delivered her passport to the wrong address.

“I was not told anything at first. It was only after an MP wrote to them for me that the Home Office explained what had happened, but I could have traced my passport if I’d known earlier,” Kate says. “When I realised it had gone to the wrong address, I assumed that, if not signed for, it would be returned to the Home Office, but a search by the department failed to uncover anything.”

In 2012, Kate decided to enrol on a university course, but she was forced to drop out after two months because she lacked the right documentation.

Kate’s passport photo. Photograph: Kate

Life became much harder after 2012, she says, because of the hostile environment policy that involved a crackdown on illegal immigrants. Kate could not work in Britain legally and had no right to rent. The Home Office urged her to try to get a replacement passport, but when she attempted to do so, the embassy of her home country, which is plagued by war, said there was no data about her.

“The consul at the embassy in my home country said there was a name but no picture, and without that they did not know who I was,” she says. “The photo may have been deliberately deleted, and even if that wasn’t what happened, it’s not my fault there’s no picture.

“I was told I need to take it to the high court in my home country, but how could I do that when I wasn’t allowed to leave the UK without a passport?”

She has survived over the past decade by being paid cash as a babysitter. “I have been staying with friends because the man I was renting from tried to evict me, and I cannot move as I have had no right to rent anywhere else,” she says.



Despite multiple attempts to resolve her situation, including the Home Office writing to the embassy of her home country to explain that it lost the passport, nothing seemed to work. Kate has missed family funerals as a result. “My uncle was like a brother to me. He died in 2015 but I could not return home for the funeral,” she says. “My best friend died last year. It has been a nightmare.

Kate was aged 22 when she first arrived in the UK. Photograph: Kate

“It left me powerless for a decade, with no control of my life.” Kate says her family had had high hopes for her. “I came to Britain at 22. I was so excited to learn English. I wanted to do that and then return home to work for my uncle.” At that point she felt confident she would succeed. “I felt like I could move mountains.”

Kate is now taking antidepressants and has had health issues brought on by stress. “I am a shadow of the person I was when I arrived here. I used to be bubbly and always smiling. I used to be really very confident, and people had hopes about me and what I could achieve, but now I am nothing. I feel like a failure.”

Two days after the Guardian contacted the Home Office, the department admitted Kate had wrongly been treated as an illegal immigrant for a decade and had always had leave to remain. A Home Office spokesperson said: “We will work with [Kate] and her lawyers to support her in obtaining a new passport and in making an application for further leave to remain.”

Johanna Bezzano of the University of Liverpool law clinic, who has been helping Kate, says: “I hope that now the case has been prioritised there will be someone to deal with and make things move.

“This acknowledgement is welcome, though long overdue. Kate still needs a document showing her legal entitlement to live in the UK. I hope to hear from the Home Office about this over the coming days so that Kate can start to recover from her 10-year ordeal.”

The news is a huge relief to Kate, but she still feels angry. “I have been tortured for 10 years,” she says. “I am now 36 and have no career and nothing, no life. I just hope I can start something now, although it may take time to resolve it all. I was at the bottom of a well and struggling day and night. I didn’t see a solution for so long.

“I came to Britain because I thought it was an open and liberal country. It would be such a shame to kill that idea ... My message to the government: don’t treat people like numbers. My life was completely destroyed.”

Ed: ‘The emotional strain was enormous’

Ed Linse was shocked when he received a letter from the Home Office saying it had lost all documents related to his wife’s case. The admission came days after the two-year appeal for her UK spouse visa was successfully upheld.

“It was farcical,” says the 47-year-old. “The first thing they said in the letter was that they would be contesting the appeal and then they basically admitted they had lost documents linked to my wife’s case.”

The Linse family at home in Macclesfield. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian

The Guardian has seen the letter from the Home Office, dated 3 May, which includes a paragraph that reads: “The respondent is regretfully experiencing difficulties in locating the Home Office file containing the respondent’s bundle and appellant’s appeal bundle before the first tier tribunal.”

Ed, a British citizen, was appealing against a decision to refuse a settlement visa for his wife, Papaipit, who is from Thailand. During the two-year process, the Home Office lost the records of the initial appeal. “[The lost documents] didn’t stall things because they only conceded that in the last moment. The entire process was opaque ... they potentially lost the documents at the beginning,” Ed says.

“It was a remarkable concession that told us they were ‘unable to locate’ pretty much all of the documents relating to every stage of our two-year-long appeal battle, which begs the question: how can they have continued to contest it for so long?”

When the Home Office refused the spousal visa, the family had to remain in Thailand for about 14 months in order to stay together. Papaipit was pregnant with their second child, who was born in Thailand despite all the antenatal arrangements having been made at Macclesfield general hospital.

The family finally returned to the UK on a visitor visa, to allow the children to see their grandparents. Eventually, after their savings ran out and the Home Office had miscalculated their funds, Papaipit had no choice but to overstay her visitor visa while they waited for the result of the appeal.

The appeal was eventually upheld, although Papaipit is still waiting for the Home Office to issue her visa. The process has taken a toll on the family. “The main effect has been the enormous emotional strain,” Ed says. “We lived in a hotel and then rented accommodation. When we moved back to the UK we lived with my parents.”

There have been significant financial implications. But more than anything, Ed says, “nothing can compensate for two years of our children’s childhoods”.

The Home Office said Papaipit was not refused a visa to settle in the UK because of missing documentation, adding that she has since been granted a visa to visit the UK.

Franklin: ‘I lost everything’

When eight enforcement officers burst into Franklin’s flat at about 7am and took him to a detention centre, he was terrified and confused. “They were going through all the flats looking for me. At first I thought it was a mistake, but then they took me away and said I would be deported in two days,” he says.

The 36-year-old from London was only detained for a day, but after that his life became much harder: he could not work or claim benefits, despite not having any problems before. He had to report to an immigration centre every two weeks.

Franklin came to the UK from Nigeria in 1989. Photograph: Linda Nylind/The Guardian

Franklin came to the UK from Nigeria with his mother in 1989. He has never had a British passport, but was given a stamped letter from the Home Office saying he had indefinite leave to remain; he has a photocopy of it. He has held several jobs in Britain, including working for Transport for London and selling photos for O2. He has always paid his taxes and his entire family are naturalised.

But when the enforcement officers came to take him away, they did a radio check and were told there was no evidence of this. They could not find any record of Franklin. He was released from detention but told he would have to go to Becket House, an immigration reporting centre, every two weeks. His benefits were stopped and he received no income for eight months.

Last month, however, Franklin was told that records of him had been found and he had indefinite leave to remain. “They sent me a letter,” he says, “but there was no apology or anything. It took nearly a year for them to find the information about me they needed.



“Being in the detention centre was scary. They were saying that my deportation date had already been decided and it was two days from then. They wanted to send me back to Nigeria, a country I have not set foot in since I left as a child.”

The impact of the delay continues, with Franklin now in rental arrears and facing possible court proceedings. Worse still, he says, is the lack of an apology. “This should never have happened and I lost everything,” he says. “It’s taken its toll – it’s something I have had to deal with.”

Franklin does not understand what happened to his records during that period, and why he was unsearchable. The Home Office told the Guardian it had not lost his documentation. When asked to clarify why it could not locate evidence of Franklin’s right to stay in the UK for eight months, the department did not respond.







