Twenty-seven years of marriage, two British sons and a granddaughter could not protect Singaporean Irene Clennell from deportation, but now the feisty grandma is fighting to get back to her family.
Clennell, 52, was deported to Singapore on Sunday, despite being the primary caregiver for her sickly British husband John, who she said has sunk into a mire of depression since she left.
"He was crying," she told AFP in an interview at her sister's cramped suburban home in the Southeast Asian city state, where she is sleeping on the sofa as she tries to find a legal way back to her family in Britain.
John had femoral artery bypass in his leg last year and suffered a subsequent hernia. Since then, she said, he has struggled to walk far and needed help dressing himself.
Clennell has been holed-up at her sister's Singapore flat, talking to the media and trying to coordinate her legal fight to be allowed back into Britain since she was deported February 26.
Her British sister-in-law has hired an immigration lawyer and set up a crowdfunding campaign to cover her legal fees, which had raised more than 53,000 pounds (USD 65,000) by today.
Her husband is so desperate for them to be reunited he has written to a French minister asking whether they could live in France as a family, said Clennell, who arrived in Singapore with hardly any money or possessions after a period in UK immigration detention.
Clennell first arrived in Britain in 1988 and worked as a receptionist at a London hotel where she met her husband, a construction worker. She was subsequently granted indefinite leave to remain in the country.
But she lost this right after spending long periods of time in Singapore, initially to have help from her family raising her young children, and then to care for her elderly parents before their deaths.
Clennell said she now regrets leaving for so long as she didn't realise it would create so many problems.
Clennell applied for leave to enter Britain in 2008 but was rejected, as were two subsequent appeals. She spent five years in India working as a forex trader.
In 2013, Clennell managed to enter as a visitor and has remained since, overstaying her visa. She reported fortnightly to an immigration centre and it was during one of these sessions in January that she was detained.
Britain's controversial spousal visa system means that the British partner in a marriage has to prove earnings of at least 18,600 pounds and the couple have to demonstrate long stretches of uninterrupted time living in Britain.
While the Clennells meet the first criteria, the periods Irene spent out of the country have posed a problem.
The threshold was put in place in 2012 as part of efforts to drive down the number of immigrants arriving in Britain from outside the European Union.
A spokesman from Britain's Home Office said in a statement all applications are considered on their individual merits and in line with immigration rules.
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