Outrage as Home Office asks one-year-old baby born in Nottingham to leave the UK
A one-year-old baby was asked to leave the country immediately after her visa application was rejected by the Home Office. Baby Massah was born in the UK in April 2023 after her parents moved to Nottingham from Jordan for their PhD and Masters degrees.
Mohammad, Massah’s father, moved to the city in 2021 with his wife. After Massah was born at Queens Medical Centre in Nottingham the family left the UK and re-entered using the baby’s Brazilian passport.
The baby, who is a Jordanian and Brazilian citizen, then left the UK again with her mother in January 2024 and re-entered the same month using her Brazilian passport. Her father, who is in the UK on a student visa until October 2025, then decided to apply for his daughter’s visa in March.
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On April 10, the family received an email from the Home Office requesting information about Massah’s stay in the UK. This was “promptly” sent over in response, on the same day, says her father. No response was received from the Home Office until May 3 when the family received an email addressed to the baby stating that her application was rejected as it was incomplete/incorrect and she did not have permission to stay in the UK.
The email reads: “We contacted you on 10 April 2024 to tell you that your application was not yet valid. We told you that you needed to provide all missing information within 10 working days of that notification.
“You have not done this and your application has been rejected as invalid. (…) As you do not have permission to stay in the UK you should now leave the country, or you may be removed.”
The electronic correspondence has put the couple “under a lot of stress”, deeply impacting their studies. Her father said: “I’m feeling really stressed out, and it seems like all of my studying is going to waste.
