Marion Fellows
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Ukraine: Urgent Refugee Applications
Marion Fellows Excerpts(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Kevin Foster
I thank my right hon. Friend for his thoughtful question. We have 50 in training today, and we are bringing the whole of UK Visas and Immigration’s quite significant resource to bear on this. In the first instance, we will take decision-makers off other immigration routes, because they will be familiar with immigration decisions and will therefore be more likely to take immigration decisions more quickly in this area. We are also talking to other Government Departments about apprentices and others who can potentially backfill other parts of the immigration system. UKVI employs thousands of decision-makers and we are looking across the piece at those with experience that we can deploy in this area and then potentially backfill other parts with those from other Departments.
Marion Fellows (Motherwell and Wishaw) (SNP)
I have a list here of everything my constituent has done to get his Ukrainian wife into this country. He started with an application on 12 February. They lost his family in the system. I have spoken to the Minister and I have been to the hub. Today my constituent emailed me four times to say that he was in Rzeszów, that the transport layer security—TLS—system was broken, that his appointment had not been registered and that there was no guarantee he would be seen. The final email said that he had been advised to leave the visa application centre, which had managed to process only seven people and was down from two clerks to one. He has been advised to go to the embassy in Warsaw. He needs biometrics, because nobody will look at him until he has them, but he is a UK national and all he wants is to get his wife and daughters back to Wishaw. Help!