Campaign for boy to be able to live in UK after parents' divorce
November 17 2009 by Liam Clifford
English born-child is to be deported along with his mother.
A
campaign has been launched to try to prevent a six-year-old boy from being
deported to the Congo because his parents have divorced.
Little Adrian
Atkinson was born in Sunderland, but faces deportation to Africa along with his
mother Anna in less than two weeks.
Anna was born in the Congo but fled
after her sister was killed in the war. She was living in Gabon when she met and
fell in love with a British oil worker. They moved to the UK and married in
2003, the same year Adrian was born.
Anna was in the process of applying
for a UK visa when the couple split and Anna’s temporary UK visa ran out in
2008.
She has now been told by the Home Office that she will be forcibly
removed from the UK unless she leaves by 25 November.
Adrian’s friends at
school have now launched a petition to call for the deportation order to be
overturned. The UK immigration department says “this decision has subsequently
been upheld through the appeals process and we now expect her to leave the
country voluntarily."
Anna says they need a UK visa to stay in the country, “Adrian is doing very well at school
and all his friends are here, but if we have to go to the Congo, we will have
nowhere to live and he will not even be able to talk to other children because
they speak French.”
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