Scandal of the Skype families

He wants to hug the boy who calls him Daddy. But he’s not allowed to – because he doesn’t earn enough money and his wife is from “the wrong part of the world”.

The Home Office, whose rules are keeping Tom apart from wife Annie and her six-year-old son Dandan, has told him instead that he should maintain his family life by “modern means of communication”, bureaucrat-speak for chatting by Skype, or Facebook Messenger.

Tom is currently working as a self-employed plasterer in County Durham. Annie and Dandan are 6,500 miles away in the Philippines.

“I’m looking at an indefinite period of time when I cannot be with my wife and child,” he says.

“Every day I go to bed without my family, every day I wake up without them.”

“I’m not coping very well. I’ve lost quite a few days work because I can’t face going in. I was driving to a job recently and a song came on the radio and I burst into tears and had to pull over. It’s like grief.

“At least Annie and I can try to understand but our little boy, he just misses his daddy. The other day he said, ‘I wish daddy was here so I could share my pizza with him.’ I just burst into tears.”

Tom met Annie in 2013 while selling property in Asia. They fell in love and eight months later were married in the Seychelles in a ceremony recognised under British law. And for a while things were wonderful.

“I had a dream life,” he says.

“Dandan, who was Annie’s little boy from a previous relationship, was just one at the time and we really bonded… and never for a moment did I anticipate any issues with UK immigration. I’m a British citizen, they’re my family, why would I?”

It was when they planned a trip back to Britain to introduce Annie and Dandan to Tom’s family that the problems started.

“While I went home to make the visa arrangements, she returned to the Philippines,” he says.

Under laws introduced in 2012 when Theresa May was home secretary, British citizens applying for a visa for a spouse are required to have an income of at least £18,600 per year. At the time, money wasn’t a problem.

“I had some savings so we fulfilled all the financial requirements,” he says.

“So when her visa was rejected we were very surprised. The reason the officer gave was they didn’t believe Annie showed sufficient evidence of wishing to return to the Philippines because she didn’t have any property in her name.”

Perplexed, Tom spent another £5,000 applying for a second time, as well as buying some land in the Philippines. Again they were rejected.

“By this time the process had taken four months – and we’re newly married, we wanted to be together, we were like: for God’s sake, what’s going on?” he says.

By the time their third application was rejected, Tom had spent nearly £20,000 on fees and collecting the necessary evidence to prove they were a genuine couple.

“The third rejection also said that I no longer had the financial capability to look after my family!” he says.

“We’d spent six months on this during which time I’d been unemployed, so it was eating into my savings. And then there’s the cost of all the applications and fees.”

Desperately missing his wife and child, “and just too disillusioned with the Government”, Tom spent the last of his money moving to the Philippines where they bought a farm and tried to forge a new life.

But after a series of misadventures, including their house being destroyed by a typhoon and the theft of their livestock by gangsters, the couple were left penniless.

Broke and desperate, Tom returned to the UK alone.

“Without those three rejections our lives would have been so different,” he says.

“All they had to do was let her visit. I wanted her to meet my family – and then we’d fly off to our next dream job and all would be lovely. Instead we’re in this horrible situation.”

Tom and Annie are now forced to communicate by Skype and Facebook Messenger as he once again tries to petition for her visa.

“This has been the worst time of my life,” he says.

For Gillian Thies, immigration laws have been similarly inflexible. When she and American doctor husband Patrick moved back to Britain in 2016 after 19 years in the US, their two adopted sons Ben and Edward, then 13 and 11, were denied entry to the country.

“My husband had a visa to work for the NHS and my youngest son has dual nationality, but the other two were adopted and it seems the laws are different for adopted children,” she says.

Immigration officials at Heathrow not only stopped the boys, Gillian says they even booked them a flight back to America – most extraordinarily, without any provision for what they were to do when they got there.

“They were prepared to just send them off alone,” she says.

“They were 13 and 11 – how could they let children of that age do that by themselves?”

Eventually, the family secured a lawyer and managed to get six-month visitor visas for Ben and Edward – but when they applied for full residency they were once again rejected.

The letter informing them of the decision gave the helpful advice to continue their (transatlantic) family life via “modern communication channels”.

Gillian is still astounded that the Home Office should consider a Skype call an effective way of maintaining a relationship with your children.

“It’s ridiculous,” she says.

“Obviously that’s not how you live a family life.”

The Thies family managed to get the judgment overturned after going public with their case.

The day they were featured on the BBC, says Gillian, she got an email asking: “Which visa would you like?”

She remains furious that the situation ever arose at all.

“There are so many massive abuses here,” she says.

“They were just children. What’s the security risk? The attitude was: deny them entry, send them away and then it’s not our problem any more. I want an apology from Theresa May. The whole thing is absolutely outrageous. I don’t know anybody who thinks it’s right to deport children.”

For Tom Shelton, however, the agony continues. Now struggling even to meet the minimum income required for a visa for his wife and child, let alone the £5,000 application fee, he confesses he can’t see a way to be with his family.

“I’m separated from Annie and Dandan by this minimum income requirement and the hostile Home Office attitude,” he says.

“I’m convinced they’re trying to find reasons to reject non-EU spouses purely to keep immigration numbers down and hit targets.

“Dandan is just a little lad, he has just turned six and I missed his birthday. We talked over Messenger and that was it. I’ve got my four-year wedding anniversary coming up on June 7 and I’m going to miss that too.

“Everyone has a right to a family life – and that’s being denied us.”