A charity supporting an Eritrean family that endured a three-year wait to be reunited has accused the Home Office of “unjustifiably lengthy” delays.
The visa application for eight-year-old Luilana to come to the UK was initially denied in 2021, but was successfully appealed a year later.
However, she was then forced to flee from war, traveling through three countries before finally reuniting with her mother in Birmingham this month.
The Home Office has been contacted for comment.
“Every day, she was all I could think about, and I worried if she was alive or dead,” said Luilana’s mother, Yordanos, who arrived in the UK in 2020.
“If I didn’t have Luilana with me now, my life would have felt divided in two. It truly is a blessing to have her here with me.”
The Refugee and Migrant Centre charity stated that the family should have been reunited much sooner and argued that, despite meeting the criteria to legally bring a child into the UK, they encountered avoidable obstacles.
Their journey began in February 2020 when Yordanos obtained a spouse visa to leave E
