The key healthcare worker and her family are among hundreds of people left in legal limbo by a backlog at the Home Office caused by the pandemic
When Vanessa Janson arrived for a shift in an A&E department during the height of the pandemic, she was told that she no longer had a job. Since then, the 46-year-old New Zealand national has been forced to live off a diminishing pot of savings due to a bungled visa extension.
“I arrived on shift the day after my visa expired,” she told the Observer. “My husband, Carl, who also qualified for a free visa extension as my spouse, lost his right to work too, and had to give up the business he’d founded. So we’ve had nearly four months with no income and no entitlement to welfare.”
