The Home Office is forcing an NHS doctor to leave the country rather than give her three-year-old daughter, currently living with her dangerously ill grandparents in Egypt, permission to come to the UK.

Amany Abdelmeguid came to the UK from Egypt in 2016 on a Tier 2 visa, sponsored by Health Education England as part of a drive to recruit junior doctors in the UK. At the same time, her husband – an anaesthetist – took a job in Saudi Arabia to get the training he needed to also work for the NHS.



The couple’s daughter, Layan, was left in Egypt with her paternal grandparents. At the time, the elderly couple were in good health. But the application has taken so long – the government guidance says 100% of applications from Cairo are processed in 15 days, but Abdelmeguid was forced to wait three months – that their health has now deteriorated to the point they can no longer look after their granddaughter.

Abdelmeguid, who works at the Sandwell and West Birmingham hospitals NHS Trust, applied for Layan’s visa in July 2017. The application was rejected in October on the grounds her husband wasn’t in the UK at the time it was made.

“The government guidelines say that both of the applicant’s parents must be present unless there are ‘serious or compelling family or other considerations which would make it desirable not to refuse the application and suitable arrangements have been made in the UK for the applicant’s care’,” said Abdelmeguid.



“I have made suitable arrangements for Layan’s care: I have more than enough money and secured a place for her at a private nursery,” she said. “The problems is that guidelines do not explain what these serious or compelling family or other considerations are. It seems that is totally based on personal opinion not the actual law.”

Layan’s father, Dr Ahmed Ibrahim, is unable to return to Egypt to look after their daughter: the Saudi government have his passport and will not let him break his contract. It is impractical for Layan to live with him: “My hours are too long to look after a child and I have just been moved to a rural part of Saudi Arabia near the Yemeni border,” he explained in a letter to the Home Office. “It is no place for a child.”

After the application – and an appeal – were rejected, Abdelmeguid received an email from the Home Office saying they understood she had exceptional circumstances she had not initially explained, and suggesting she should re-apply. She did so – providing all the evidence they asked for – but received another rejection on the same grounds.



“I don’t understand how my daughter’s circumstances are less than exceptional,” she said. “And I can’t understand the logic of the refusal: I can care for her. And I really don’t understand the logic of a government that pays money to recruit doctors from abroad to work here and then makes it impossible for them to stay.



“I believe the government has responsibility to the people it recruits, to let them have families and lives in the country they’re working for,” she added. “I have already sat the NHS’s entry exam for GP training but I am now facing the fact that I have to go back to look after my daughter.



“I feel people need to know how the Home Office treats legal immigrants who want to fill the massive gaps in the NHS, how hard they’re making it for me to work in this country in a job that is desperately needed, that I want to do.”



The official statistics on Tier 2 visas granted to health and social work staff [Table cs_03, Column 24] show the NHS is increasingly reliant on people like Abdelmeguid, with numbers increasing from 2,921 in 2010 to 5,287 in 2016.

But it appears they may be facing increasing difficulty in bringing their dependent children to live with them here: the number of children, partners and dependants granted the right to live in Britain has dropped by 73% in a decade.



Abdelmeguid’s MP, Preet Kaur Gill, has written to the Home Office on her behalf. In her letter, she said: “I understand that from the Home Office point of view Amany could postpone her training and go and look after Layan, [but] surely this would be at the detriment to the UK with the shortage of qualified doctors with seven to 10% of roles unfilled.



“Due to the the nature of this case; and the child concerned being very young; and the fact that Amany is in a profession that is sought after by the UK; and she has secured a private nursery place for Layan, I would ask that the decision regarding Layan be reconsidered so she can reside in the UK with her mother,” she wrote.



A Home Office spokesperson said: “Under immigration rules, unless one parent has had sole responsibility for the child’s upbringing, both of the applicant’s parents must either be lawfully present in the UK, or being granted entry clearance or leave to remain at the same time as the applicant. Or one parent must be lawfully present in the UK and the other is being granted entry clearance or leave to remain at the same time as the applicant.”