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UK refuses visa for girl left destitute in Jamaica after Hurricane Melissa
The Guardian
|November 28, 2025
An eight-year-old girl left destitute in Jamaica after Hurricane Melissa has been barred from coming to the UK to join her parents.
The Guardian reported on the case of Lati-Yana Stephanie Brown after the hurricane. Her mother, Kerrian Bigby, a care worker, moved from Jamaica to be with Lati-Yana's father, Jerome Hardy, a telecommunications worker, in April 2023, leaving their daughter with her grandmother.
The couple married this year and after, saving up for the £4,000 visa application fee for Lati-Yana to join them in the UK, applied in June. After Hurricane Melissa, the couple urged the Home Office to expedite their visa decision, saying an urgent situation had become an emergency.
The hurricane destroyed the house Lati-Yana was living in with her grandmother, who Bigby said is no longer physically able to look after her, in Cash Hill, Hanover, a part of Jamaica that was badly damaged by the storm. Unicef has launched an appeal to support an estimated 1.6 million children affected by the hurricane in the region, including those in Jamaica, Cuba and Haiti, to access essentials including clean water, education and nutrition.
This story is from the November 28, 2025 edition of The Guardian.
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