The United Kingdom (UK) has been accused of blocking qualified Kenyans and other citizens from the Global South from emigrating to the country.
Fears that Kenyans were being deliberately locked out arose after a Kenyan literature expert, a woman, was denied the opportunity to bring her six-year-old daughter over to live with her.
The Kenyan who is permanently employed as a lecturer at a top university in the country had applied for her daughter's Visa which was supposed to take 15 days.
She further took the first steps towards preparing for her daughter's arrival in the UK by enrolling her on a primary school in Bristol.
Later, she found out that the UK had decided that the Visa application did not meet compassionate grounds to warrant approval.
“It was your mother’s decision to depart for the UK,” a letter from the Home Office read.
The response raised fears in the world of academia that the rejection was not valid.
It was also in direct contradiction to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s pledge that he would make Britain a global science superpower by attracting top talent from across the world.
“The decision to separate a young child from her mother under such spurious grounds is an act of unthinkable cruelty, of which we have sadly become familiar in recent years,” an African professor at the university noted that this was becoming a common occurrence.
In May, the UK announced new visa restrictions for people willing to join academic institutions.
In tightening its visa application process, the UK noted that many people were using the academic path as a loophole to look for greener pastures away from their homes.
“The government restrictions to student visa routes will substantially cut net migration by restricting the ability for international students to bring family members on all but post-graduate research routes and banning people from using a student visa as a backdoor route to work in the UK,” it was stated then.
