SA woman in fight to change UK immigration law

An elderly KZN woman, who won an international case to allow her to remain in Britain with her daughter, has started a new immigration battle.

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Durban - The 92-year-old KwaZulu-Natal woman who won the right to live out the rest of her days with her daughter in the UK, said the battle was not over for others such as herself, and she is now fighting for changes to the immigration law.

On Thursday, Myrtle Cothill, with her family and legal team, handed a petition to the UK government, seeking the reformation of the Adult Dependent Relative Rule.

They have called for a reversal of a July 2012 amendment to the rule and for the previous rule to be reinstated.

At present, the rule only allows relatives to join family in cases where care is either not available or unaffordable in the country of origin, but privately affordable in the UK, Cothill’s barrister, Jan Doerfel, said.

“This makes it virtually impossible for persons to be looked after by their families in the UK,” he said.

The petition was started by Doerfel on Cothill’s behalf on Change.org, and more than 152 500 people from around the world have signed it.

Doerfel said in the UK, any petition with more than 100 000 signatures was considered for a parliamentary debate.

The July 2012 amendment was never subject to public consultation or a debate, he said.

“This makes it even more important that the Adult Dependent Rule be debated,” he said. “The immigration rules are meant to show public interest.”

A sickly widow with no surviving family in South Africa, Cothill travelled from Port Shepstone to the UK in February 2014, to visit her 66-year-old daughter, Mary Wills.

After a few months there, she decided she did not want to come back.

But the British Home Office said her six-month visitor visa could not be switched to a residency permit, and that such an application would have to have been made while she was still in South Africa.

She was scheduled to be deported last month - but in the wake of the outpouring of public support and widespread media coverage the case attracted - at the last minute, the British authorities allowed her to stay while they reconsidered her case.

This month, the UK Home Office advised Cothill she would be granted leave to remain without recourse to public funds.

Daily News