Deportation threat beggars belief

HEATHER Cavin has lived in the UK for more than 50 years, nursed the sick for more than 40 years and needs to keep on working to care for her elderly husband following a heart operation.

She has paid her taxes and spent not a day on the dole. She is Canadian by birth, but embodies everything that the government tells us we should expect from people who wish to live in Britain.

Yet Heather, who should be looking forward to putting up her feet in retirement, is now facing up to the prospect of being deported because it has only just come to light that she does not have an official Home Office stamp on her passport.

The fine folk of the not-fit-for-purpose department, which has lost track of countless illegal immigrants and almost as many laptops, are now threatening to bring the full force of the law down on a 59-year-old nurse from Kinlochleven.

In the words of MSP Mary Scanlon, this is bureaucracy gone mad.

Is there not a single person in a position of responsibility who can bring a moment of sanity to this farce?