THE Home Office has apologised to a Herefordshire family at the centre of an immigration row.

Nigel Moore’s Japanese wife, Shiho Konno, was effectively placed under house arrest after being threatened with deportation, even though the couple had a six-year-old daughter, Kay, who is a British citizen and settled in a county primary school.

Mr Moore, who works in the fibre optics communications industry, said grounds for refusal for his wife to remain in the UK were purely that the application was not made in Japan.

He claimed that the Home Office had “wilfully” ignored the fact that their daughter holds a British passport and birth certificate.

Mrs Moore was given the stark choice of deportation to her native Japan in 12 days or making a lengthy appeal. This could have resulted in her being under a virtual house arrest, with no passport and being banned from working for a period of 18 months.

But, after the story appeared in the Hereford Times yesterday, the family has received some good news from the Home Office.

They contacted Mrs Konno to inform her that she has been granted leave to remain in the UK.

A Home Office spokesperson told the Hereford Times: "We recognise that errors were made in the original consideration of her case and have apologised for the inconvinience and distress this has caused."