A nine-year-old boy from Cardiff is stuck in Romania after UK border control denied him boarding at Milan airport despite being born in Wales
A nine-year-old boy from Cardiff is stuck abroad after his distraught family were told he was not able to return home to the UK after a routine family trip.
David Toropu and his mum are now stranded in Romania waiting to find out when they might be able to return home following a recent UK government rule change.
David, his mum Christina, and her husband and stepson had been on a rugby tour to Venice in the first week of the Easter holidays. After a four-night stay the family then arrived to check in at Milan airport on Thursday (April 2) for their return flight to London Gatwick.
They expected to travel smoothly through all the airport checks, as they had done on the way out, but were met with an unexpected problem – they were told David could not board a flight to the UK as the UK border control held no record of his UK residency.
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Despite being born in Cardiff and spending his entire life in Wales, David holds a Romanian passport, with his parents having relocated to the UK a year before his birth. His mum explained that both she and David’s father are Romanian nationals – his father holds settled status while his mother has pre-settled status.
Christina said: “I wasn’t aware that I needed to apply for his own status because since he was born in 2016 after seven years of continuous residency he was supposed to get automatic British citizenship.
“Because I thought that was given automatically to him he wouldn’t need to have his own settled or pre-settled status since he would have dual citizenship. However, the rules have changed since Brexit and I wasn’t aware of that.”, reports Wales Online.
With her son unable to return home, Christina had to stay in Italy with him while her stepson and husband returned to the UK to allow him to go to school and her husband to return to work. The mum and son spent two further nights in Italy before travelling to Romania, where they are staying with family until David is able to travel home.
Christina said: “The UK border said they didn’t hold any record of David ever being in the UK but he goes to school, he’s enrolled in many public things like football, his GP is in the UK, his whole life is over there. He’s only left the UK once when he was two years old for two weeks.
“Since he was denied I’ve had multiple panic attacks, I’m losing my head and I can’t stop crying. He’s used to his routines, his comfort in his house and everything that is his normal life. He heard the whole conversation of him being refused at the border and he was asking what was going to happen to him. In his mind he was thinking they were going to take me back to the UK and leave him in Italy.”
At the airport, Christina tried to rectify the situation by applying for an electronic travel authorisation (ETA) but because the visa is intended for travel to the UK rather than residency and his registered address is in the UK, immigration officials insisted he was unable to return.
Christina is now worried that resolving the situation could result in David missing substantial amounts of school and her missing vital health appointments in the UK. She is also concerned about the substantial costs she has faced as a result of the mix-up, having spent around £2,000 on hotel rooms, flights and applications in less than a week.
She said: “We have made a really big dent into our savings and the rugby team my stepson plays for has created a gofundme to try and help us with the costs. In the Italian hotel we had the cheapest and smallest room and it cost £157 a night by itself.”
David’s constituency MP, Alex Davies-Jones, told Wales Online: “I’m really concerned to hear about David’s situation, and I’ve been in contact with his family to offer support. This is clearly a very distressing experience for both David and his mum.
“My office is doing everything we can to assist the family in resolving this as quickly as possible, and I will continue to support them in any way I can to help bring David home safely.”
In February, the UK government rolled out a new travel system changing the rules for many visitors and dual nationals entering the UK. The system means dual nationals are required to either show a British passport or a new digital version of the certificate of entitlement to the right of abode or they risk being denied entry.
Dual nationals used to be able to travel to the UK without such a certificate using their non-British passport. Certificates of entitlement are not automatically issued meaning some people have spent decades living in the UK and have never needed to apply for them before.
The government is therefore urging dual nationals to apply for either a British passport, which costs around £100 for an adult, or a certificate of entitlement, which carries a fee of £589.
A spokesperson from the Home Office said the necessary documentation has now been granted.
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