AN 81-year-old grandmother has been banned from coming home to Britain – and has been stuck in the Caribbean for over SEVEN years after going on holiday there.
Gretel Gorcan arrived with the Windrush generation in 1960 but was told she needed a visa to return when she tried to go home after her trip abroad.
Since 2010, she has instead been stranded in Jamaica without her family, broke and unable to even pay for the medications she desperately needs to treat her diabetes.
She is homeless and says losing the full life she once had in Britain has “broken” her heart.
When Gretel first arrived in East London aged 24, she had a Jamaican passport with a stamp inside which gave her indefinite leave to remain – but the passport was stolen in a 2006 burglary at her home.
She immediately applied for a new one, but to her family’s shock, was told she would not be given another British passport and if she left the country, would instead have to apply for a visa using her Jamaican passport.
But needing to attend her sister’s funeral in the Carribean in 2010, Gretel had to leave the country.
When she tried to return, her visa was rejected and she has been stranded ever since.
A devastated Gretel told the Mirror: “From the life I once had surrounded by my children in London to having been made homeless in Jamaica has broken my heart.
“I travelled to Britain to help out on the promise of a new life but now they have turned their back on me.
“My children are still in London but I am left here.
“It is now how I wanted to live my final years.”
Adding to the family’s stress, British authorities are demanding Gretel pay back £19,000 in social security payments which they claim she was never entitled to – despite Gretel working in the country.
Daughter Pauline, 56 said: “Mum is penniless. She has nothing except for the money I send over. What do they want her to do? Be homeless again?
“She has been left with absolutely nothing by authorities when her entire life is in the UK.
“My mum has six children in the UK and she has grandchildren and some of them she hasn’t seen or even held.”