London: Amid delay in visas to enter the UK, hundreds of Ukrainian families have begun withdrawing from the ‘Homes for Ukraine’ scheme. According to The Guardian, the UK sponsors are also walking away because of problems with issuing visas to families fleeing the war.
There had been several cases of sponsors reporting difficulties in providing home for the Ukrainian refugees. One of the coordinators of the Home Valley sponsor scheme, Rebecca Gough said, “Families are pulling out and choosing not to come to the UK because of the amount of time it is taking for visas to come through.”
The organisation said that out of 160 applicants about 40 have already withdrawn their application forms. Meanwhile, a family of six Ukrainians informed the organisation that they would be opting Romania instead of UK because of the delay in visa.
Last Thursday, the UK government had accepted that the processing problems within the Home Office caused delays. The Guardian quoted Gough as revealing that a number of Ukrainians had grown weary of waiting for a UK visa despite having a sponsor and had returned to the Mariupol area.
She said, “They have not been in contact for 10 days and we fear the worst.” Despite the delays, the government has said, “Thanks to the generosity of the public who have offered their homes to Ukrainians fleeing the war and through our Ukraine Family Scheme, more than 86,000 visas have been granted with over 27,000 Ukrainians arriving safely in the UK.
“We are processing thousands of visas a day – this shows the changes we made to streamline the service are working and we’ll continue to build on this success so we can speed up the process even further.”
