A mother and her six-year-old son face losing their home in the UK after the Home Office ended her lawful residence and failed to tell her – but her digital visa continued to show she had the right to remain in Britain.

Creative director Skye von der Osten, who partially grew up and went to school in the UK, decided to make Britain her home in the Spring of 2023. The US-German national was able to live and work in the UK on a skilled worker visa, working as a creative director at an events company.

She then moved to a design firm but was let go from her job last February, leaving her to search for a new employer who could sponsor her visa or find another route to stay in the UK. After making an application to waive the cost of a family visa, her digital immigration status showed she continued to have the right to be in Britain.

However, the Home Office informed her some months later that this was incorrect and Ms Von der Osten was in fact an overstayer.

She now faces deportation and having to pull her 6-year-old, Neo, out of school and rip him away from the life they have built in the UK. Without immediate family, she had hoped she would be able to settle in the UK permanently with her son.

Home Office officials seemingly mixed up Ms Von der Osten’s application for a global talent visa endorsement, made to the Arts Council, with a formal application to remain in the country. As a result of this apparent error, they ended her fee waiver application – which had been prolonging her right to stay in the UK.

Officials informed her in December 2025 that they were no longer making a fee waiver decision, but did not explain that this meant she had to put in an application to stay in Britain within the next 10 days or become an overstayer. Throughout this period, Ms Von der Osten’s online visa showed she had the right to be in the UK.

The 23 December letter said Ms Von der Osten “will be contacted regarding your paid application in due course”, despite the fact that she had not yet submitted such an application.

She was then told in May this year that she was in fact an overstayer in the eyes of the Home Office and that any application to stay here would be refused. The 46-year-old is now having to fight the decision in a legal challenge and has been forced to crowdfund her living costs after spending her savings on trying to stay in the UK.

She told , “I had been trying to follow all the rules. I haven’t worked, I haven’t left the country, so there is no way to jeopardise the visa application.

“My visa said I was allowed to be here while I was waiting for my decision. If I had known that I was about to overstay, I would have done the right thing, but I wasn’t given the opportunity. And now my son and I are down to lose everything.

“I don’t have family elsewhere, so I can’t just leave and start something new. I am now reduced to crowdfunding for our living costs because I have depleted my savings.

“We face losing our home and that will be traumatic. I don’t know what it would do to my son if we had to leave everything. What do I teach him? That when institutions make mistakes we just accept them, and that institutions don’t care about us? I want to give him the opportunity to form opinions on his own. And it feels so wrong and unjust to just accept this fault.”

She added: “I relied in good faith on the information I was given. I don’t know what else to do if I can’t rely on the information I am given by the Home Office.

“The system just forces you to give up – it feels like a silent ICE, that prolongs the process and forces you to give up. It’s not as public, but it is a very cruel process – not giving enough information, forcing people to have to have a lawyer... it doesn’t allow many people to be successful at this.”

“I don’t have rights to benefits, I can’t work, I can’t travel, I can’t get any public funding support. You don’t feel you have any rights. I just wish there was some humanity in the Home Office, but it doesn’t feel like character or circumstances are taken into account.

“I had a good job, I was paying a lot of taxes, there are a lot of us who are valuable contributors to the UK, and that doesn’t seem to matter.”

Philip Turpin,onsultant solicitor at Turpin Miller, who has taken on Ms Von der Osten’s case, said: “There has been a clear mistake by the Home Office, which has led to hugely damaging consequences for Skye and her son. We will be looking to the courts to put this right.”

A Home Office spokesperson said: “We do not routinely comment on individual cases.

“All visa applicants are provided with appropriate guidance throughout the process to assist with applications within specific timeframes. Each application is assessed on their individual merits along with the evidence provided.”