PREGNANT MUM FACES FAMILY SPLIT IN DEPORTATION ROW

Rachel and Mark Nagle will find out on Wednesday whether she can stay in the country after waiting 14 months for an appeal to be heard.

In that time, Rachel, 28, has had the couple's first child and is four months pregnant with their second. Next week they will go to London and beg a judge not to break their hearts and split up the family.

Rachel, who lives with Mark and eight month old daughter Bethany in St Andrews Square, said: "I just feel completely numb. I feel empty.

"We feel alone with nobody to help us. I wake up crying. I just don't know what will happen."

Mark, 33, added: "This has been hanging over us for 14 months and we are sick with worry. We have fallen in love and got married. We have done nothing wrong."

Rachel met Mark in June 2002 while on holiday in Hastings and they quickly became inseparable.She wanted to stay with him and managed to get another holiday visa for a further six months.

They married at Hastings Register Office in April 2003, after which Rachel applied to stay in the country as spouse. The Nagles were told by the Home Office that she needed to supply details of how she was being supported and they contacted Fitzgrahams solicitors to help them.

A solicitor at the firm filled out a new application, but that was refused in August 2003. They appealed against the decision and Wednesday's hearing is the last chance they have of keeping their family together. They will not be represented by a solicitor because Fitzgrahams have stopped dealing with their case and they haven't been able to find another firm to help them. But Rachel being sent home is unthinkable to the Nagles. She has no family in Australia to help her through her pregnancy. The couple say Bethany would stay with her father because it would be too much for the little girl to travel halfway across the world and start living in unfamiliar surroundings.

If ordered back to Australia, Rachel would need to reapply to return to England and rejoin her husband. However, she thinks this could take years because she would have to raise their second child and would struggle to find a suitable job.

Mark is a shop worker and it would be difficult for him to raise the money for her airfare back to England in a short period of time.

Rachel said: "If I was sent home it could take me years to get back here and see my husband. I would miss Bethany's first birthday and he would miss the birth of his second child."

The Nagles said they do not fully understand why she is not being allowed to stay, but Home Office immigration rules say anyone here on holiday who gets married must reapply for a different visa in their home country.

Whatever the legal reasons for the Home Office wanting to send Rachel home, the couple will appeal to the judge's basic humanity on Wednesday.

Mark said: "We are going to ask for her to stay on compassionate grounds. We don't understand the law and we don't want to get into a legal argument. We are going to say, 'Don't tear our family apart. Please don't do this to us'."

A Home Office spokesman would not talk about the Nagles' case, but said: "If someone is given limited leave to enter the United Kingdom for six months or less they cannot stay on the grounds of marriage during that initial leave to stay.

"They would normally have to go back to their country of origin and apply as a spouse."