A SCOTS MP and a lawyer have made an impassioned plea to the Home Office on behalf of a young woman in Scotland who has been given months to live to allow her mother to visit her for the last time.

Nour, who is fearful of her full identity being known, is 25 and fled war-ravaged Syria almost a year ago to join her husband in Glasgow.

However, their joy was short-lived when she was diagnosed with terminal colon cancer, which has aggressively spread to other parts of her body, and was given between three and six months to live.

Now the couple’s SNP MP Chris Stephens and Usman Aslam, their lawyer, have said Nour’s mother Nayfa only wants to come here to visit her daughter for the last time and urged the Home Office to expedite the visa applications from her mother and sister Sulaaf.

They have already made visitor applications and completed the required biometrics in Beirut, but Stephens is hoping the process can be speeded up.

He said his constituent was not well enough to travel, and added: “But her mother and sister would like to visit her in the UK during her last months of life.

“I would therefore like to support their visitor visa applications as well as ask for the process to be expedited so that the family can be reunited for a short period of time.

“I would be grateful if you could take into consideration the compassionate circumstances of this case when making your decision.”

Nour and her husband already have a son, but she had to have a termination because of the cancer.

Usman Aslam, her lawyer, said she had told him in her statement that “one always thinks you will bury your mother, not the other way round”.

He said the visitor visa application could arguably be the most challenging to obtain.

Aslam, from the Glasgow firm McGlashan Mackay, said: “The Home Office appear to have the view, more often than not, that the person coming here will never return.

“Whilst there is a need to prevent abuse, there also needs to be a fairer and more realistic approach to what evidence can be provided by the person coming to the UK.”

He said immigration rules generally required evidence to show how the visitor will return to their home country. From a western perspective, that may sound easy, for example bank statements, wage slips, title deeds, all showing that there is something to go back home to.

“However, there are a large number of countries where people tend not to have a lot of similar documents, therefore applicants are often refused,” Aslam added.

“In this scenario, we have a mother and sister of a very young girl in the UK who has been told she has between three to six months to live and that mother and sister live in Syria, where there is civil war, and most documents are unobtainable.

“There is a letter from the NHS confirming matters.

He added: “Given that the applicants are from Syria, it is likely in our view that there may be scepticism from the Home Office that they will not return home.

“In a case like this, one would hope that on compassionate grounds, the decision maker can sympathise with a dying girl who just wants to see her mother and sister before the inevitable happens.”

A Home Office spokesperson said: “All applications are considered on their individual merits, on the basis of the evidence available and in line with UK immigration rules.”