Capita is a private firm hired by the Home Office to get those who outstay their visa to comply with the immigration application rulings. Wills, who holds a British passport, says the enforcers will have to kill her before they deport her mother.

She has also received instructions from immigration enforcement officials advising her her mother needs to sign in at Bournemouth police station on the first Wednesday in January.

The former Tory MP Ann Widdecombe, who has taken up the case of the South African pensioner, says the decision is heartless in the extreme. She added: On this occasion the rule book has proved a brutal master instead of a useful servant.

Saira Grant, legal and policy director at the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, said Cothill was a casualty of 2012 changes in immigration laws.

The new adult dependent rules say migrants must as a result of age, illness or disability, require long term personal care: that is help performing everyday tasks, eg washing, dressing and cooking. This means the 92-year-old has to prove she is dying before she can stay with her daughter, says Grant.

Cothill has an enlarged heart, poor hearing and has lost the sight in one eye because of macular degeneration but neither her condition nor her advanced age is enough to secure her the comfort of life with her daughter.

A Home Office spokesman said Cothills application was rejected as her condition was not deemed to be life-threatening and that suitable medical treatment was available in her country of origin.

Wills, who lost her father when she was a small child, has vowed to fight deportation. I came into this world fatherless. My mother worked her fingers to the bone to educate me and to build a life for me. Why cant I take care of her in her old age, like she did for me when I was a child? She is not a threat to anyone. It is just wrong to separate us.

Cothill said she was very hurt at theHome Office ruling. Not only was was she born under the British flag in 1924, but her father fought for the UK in the first world war and her brother fought for the country in the second world war. She is also financially independent with a pension of ?300 a month.

Asked how she would feel if she is removed from the country, Cothill said: I dont want to go. Ive got nobody there and I am not well enough to travel. Im very upset. Im very old. Im 92. I want to live with my daughter for the end of my days.

Cothills case has come after the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman said too many lives were being put on hold by the Home Office. It upheld 69 of immigration complaints about the Home Office largely centring on delays and discretionary decision making.

At her wits end, Wills has organised a petition on Change.org to try to persuade the Home Office to show some compassion and change their mind. My mother just cannot live on her own, she said. And emotionally, to her as well as for myself, it would really tear strips out of our heart and probably would kill my mother.

I

I mean, she's 92. She's definitely dying.

In the petition, her barrister, Jan Doerfel, has called on the Home Office to review its decision, but also to urgently reinstate the rules that operated for the previous 40 years, which allowed elderly dependents to join British nationals or other settled persons if they could be accommodated and financially supported by their children or grandchildren without reliance on the public purse.

Wills says she could not have gone to South Africa to look after her mother partly because her husband, who is British also, has Parkinsons disease, and because she is not legally entitled to live there.

typical of the uk now

Typical Britain with their dumb c**t politics.

Wot a fkn joke

buy a cat

We always get rid of the wrong people, a poor old white lady in her 90s shouldn't be treated this way especially with all the refugees here who can't even speak English and are constantly causing trouble here. This old woman should be allowed to stay imo.

No she can't come here to die, what does she think this is, a nursing home?

How about her family go over there instead..?

she could hide in Christchurch..it's only 2 mins down the road...get a deck chair, bit of blue rinse and park herself on the beach. She'll be one of thousands

Will check out the petition.. As always I'm alarmed at the references to non English speak refugees and it be ok to stay because she's white.. This lack of humanity truly epitomises everything that's wrong with Britain.

who said she was white?

she is bozza... Not that it really matters. What matters to me is her age, her only close family is there nd she is ill.

This

She's probably more translucent than anything, at that age.

I never checked to see, sorry