‘I’ve spent seven years here, got married and built a business – now I could lose it all’

A woman who has lived in Manchester for four years and runs a business from Afflecks’ Palace could be forced to leave the country, in an ‘awful’ visa mix-up.

Erin Taylor-Thomas, 26, moved to the UK seven years ago. She married husband Ethan in 2020 and they built a life here running a thriving thrift shop (Beg, Steal and Borrow) inside Afflecks Palace. The business is so successful that she was planning to open a second Withington branch.

But tragically she missed the expiry of her visa in February, and despite having spent nearly £7,000 applying twice for a new one, the Home Office have refused, recommending she return to a country she hasn’t called home since she was 19.

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She told the Manchester Evening News: “My whole life is here and I wouldn’t know what to do with myself if I didn’t have the support system and community that I do here. This is literally my home.”

Erin first came to the UK on a student visa in 2017. She studied a design degree at Arts University Bournemouth, where she met Ethan.

Now husband and wife, they live with their cat Sugar Cube in Withington. The pair are distraught at the prospect of being separated, but the Home Office say she has overstayed her visa and, unless she wins her appeal, they expect her to return to the US.

Erin made the discovery in April when she was searching for the documents that proved her right to rent.

“I pulled the document out of a drawer and was like, f**k, it’s expired,” she said. “Immediately I panicked. My first thought was, I’ve messed everything up. I was inconsolable, I completely disassociated.”

Since being diagnosed with ADHD as a child, Erin said she has struggled with organisation. “When I got my first biometric residency pass, the administrator at my uni said to me, ‘don’t mess with this, don’t take it out’.

“I was told, just find somewhere safe, and put this away. So that’s essentially what I did. I never checked the date, and life was just happening, and I didn’t have time to think about it.”

The Home Office does not notify people that their visa is about to expire. According to employment and immigration lawyers Davidson Morris, “it is the visa holder’s responsibility to monitor their individual visa expiry.”

But the month that Erin’s visa expired, February of this year, was a hectic one for her. She had two big events to organise at the shop, and the person who normally helps her run the business was off work with a health issue.

“It was the most chaotic, crazy month,” Erin said. “Life was just happening, and I didn’t have time to think about my visa.”

When she eventually realised it had expired, she began research immediately, applying for British nationality via naturalisation on April 23 . Because Erin had lived in the UK for over five years, she believed that she met the requirements.

But in fact, because she had been resident on two different visas – leave to enter, as a student, and then leave to remain, via her spouse – it didn’t yet count as a continuous five years’ residency. Her application was refused on July 18.

“I think the wording catches people out,” she said. “All the different routes, it’s confusing and convoluted and there’s lots of wait times and red tape.”

She then applied again for leave to remain via her spouse on August 9, and received notice that this too had been refused on October 17. Now, the couple are working on appealing the decision.

They estimate that the first application, including the NHS fee, cost around £2k. The second one cost about the same, plus a solicitor’s fee, bringing the total up to around £6.5k.

The appeal, which will involve hiring another solicitor and an immigration barrister for a court tribunal, will cost around £3k, bringing the total cost of the whole process to around £10k. “It’s wiped out our savings,” said Ethan when he spoke to the M.E.N. “And waiting for the tribunal means another six months in limbo.”

What they couldn’t pay for from their savings, they have put on a credit card. “All the money I get when I pay myself from the business goes to paying that off,” Erin said.

But she says she feels ‘privileged’ that she is even able to launch an appeal. “I can’t actually believe how hard and impossible it can be,” she said. “It’s all a money thing. If I didn’t have a way to access money or a loan, I wouldn’t be able to do it.”

The letter from the Home Office read: “As you have had no valid leave in the UK since 8th February 2024, your current LTR Partner application is 6 months and 1 day Out of Time.”

But Erin feels this is unfair, as it doesn’t count the time she spent applying for the first visa. “I paid all that money, which you don’t get back, and waited months for a response. And when I found out it was refused, I applied for the next one as quickly as I could.”

“The whole message was just so cold,” she said. “It was never my intention to overstay. It was just human error. And it’s not that I didn’t try.”

The Home Office is matter-of-fact about Erin being forced to return. “It is not accepted that there would be very significant obstacles to your integration into the US,” they said in their refusal letter.

They argue that as Erin grew up there, and has already relocated once before, would “not face significant obstacles” if she had to do so again. But Erin argues that, when she left the US, her life “hadn’t yet started”.

“They say I have family in America but it’s just not that simple,” she added. “Not only would I be a financial burden, but they wouldn’t want me there. We don’t have that relationship where I can live with them. It wouldn’t be a good situation for me to go back into.”

Erin also said her and her family were politically at-odds too. “Where I’m from, in Tennessee, it’s very conservative, Republican and Trump-heavy, which is not my thing at all. And there’s some real issues going on with trans and abortion rights.

“There’s a lot of limitations and I just don’t identify with or believe in that. There’s a lot more freedom in the UK.”

She also believes it wouldn’t work on a practical level, saying she would struggle to even pay for the plane ticket. “My family live in the middle of nowhere and I don’t have a car to take me to a job. It would take months to get Ethan over here.”

Most people Erin has spoken to were amazed that being married to a British citizen isn’t enough to secure her residency. But the Home Office is unmoved by the prospect of what a forced return to the US would mean for Ethan and Erin’s relationship.

“Although your partner is a British Citizen, who may not wish to uproot and relocate, and it may be very difficult for them to do so, this degree of hardship does not amount to a significant obstacle,” they said in the letter.

Ethan, who met Erin on Tinder, said: “This has honestly been one of the worst weeks of my life. I’ve not been able to work, I can’t focus on anything.”

“Erin’s spent a lot of time crying and she keeps making quite dark jokes. It’s a real stress to try and keep positive, because it’s a really dark time for her. It’s just been really, really awful.”

While they wait for their court date, Erin cannot leave the country under any circumstances. “That’s one of the most stressful things,” she said. “If something happens to my family now, I can’t leave, because I can’t come back. That’s one of my biggest fears.”

At the same time, she is in part looking forward to the tribunal because she’ll get to represent herself in person. “We’ve had no contact with an actual person this whole time,” she said.

She’s also had many offers from people offering to write letters to support her appeal. In the meantime, she and Ethan are going to get on with opening the Withington branch. “Maybe it’s not sensible, but I think just, press on,” he said. “I’m not going to let life just go on pause.”

If her appeal is successful, then the end goal is becoming a British citizen. “Build a business here, build a whole life here and grow old here,” said Ethan. “She doesn’t ever want to move back to the US.”

“The bureaucracy of it all is a lot to handle,” Erin said. “To tell someone who’s made their whole life here, who made a mistake and is now reaping the consequences of my action or my inaction, that they have to leave. But I have been trying to fix it.”

When approached for comment, a Home Office spokesperson said: “It is a longstanding government policy that we do not comment on individual cases.”

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