Doctor who feared having to leave UK after visa blow wins Home Office U-turn

A doctor from Pakistan who feared he would have to leave his job at a GP surgery in east London is celebrating after a Home Office U-turn over a decision that would have separated him from his family.

On Monday morning the Guardian reported on the case of Tajwer Siddiqui , 59, and his wife, Shehlar Tajwer, 50, who had been granted visas to come to the UK while their daughter, Alina Tajwer Siddiqui, 19, had not.

Their daughter could not live independently due to her autism and needed her parents to care for her, the couple said. But the Home Office initially refused her a visa to come to the UK, saying she was over 18 and that her parents had not demonstrated “compassionate or compelling circumstances” that would justify officials granting her permission.

In a refusal letter dated 29 August 2024, the Home Office official said that as well as not meeting the “compassionate and compelling grounds” test, they did not believe that the decision to separate Alina from her parents met the “unjustifiably harsh consequences” threshold.

But after the article about the case was published, a Home Office spokesperson told the Guardian: “We have reconsidered this case and we are in contact with the family to let them know of their next steps. We apologise for any inconvenience which may have been caused.”

Siddiqui said: “I’m out of words, I’m so overjoyed about the Home Office’s change of heart. Alina cannot go out by herself and psychologically she is very attached to us. We hadn’t had the courage to tell her her visa had been refused. We are so relieved and my daughter will be very thankful.”

Siddiqui worked in medicine for decades in his home country of Pakistan and in Saudi Arabia before he successfully applied to the Home Office for a highly skilled worker visa to take up a position at an NHS GP surgery in Ilford, east London, called Doctor’s House.

The GP surgery is sponsoring his visa and he began working there on 1 July as a GP assistant until he completes an exam known as a PLAB – a Professional Linguistics Assessment Board test – that all overseas-qualified doctors must take before they can start to practise as a doctor in the UK.

The practice business manager at the surgery, Ikram Khan, said Siddiqui had been a great asset to patients at the surgery since he began working there.

Siddiqui’s wife is also a qualified family doctor and hopes to work as a doctor in the UK. She was granted a visa to come and work here as a dependant of her husband.