New trans MSP does not have visa to stay permanently in UK
A TRANS Indian immigrant has become the first person to be elected to Holyrood despite not having a visa to stay permanently in the UK.
Dr Q Manivannan, who identifies as non-binary, was elected as an MSP on the Edinburgh & Lothians East list for the pro-independence Scottish Greens.
But it was reported earlier this week that the former PhD student has appealed to colleagues for £2,089 of funding for a temporary graduate visa.
This would give the anthropologist and poet a further three years to work and live in the UK, picking up the taxpayer-funded MSP salary of £77,711.
Manivannan is said to have told colleagues this would help buy time to save up the £5,047 cost of applying for a global talent visa, the UK immigration category for promising individuals in specific sectors.
The self-described “queer Tamil immigrant” was able to stand in the election only after SNP ministers loosened the rules over who could be a Holyrood candidate.
Foreign nationals could previously only become an MSP if they had indefinite leave to remain in the UK.
But last year the SNP government introduced legislation that meant they could qualify if they had leave of any type, such as a short-term study visa.
Manivannan was born in the Tamil Nadu region of southern India and has declared a strong connection with the region’s “significant history of resistance, of social justice, of ecological justice, being inextricable from social justice”. Following an undergraduate degree in Delhi, Manivannan moved to Scotland in 2021 to pursue a PhD in International Relations at the University of St Andrews.
The student was elected as an MSP on Friday under Holyrood’s complicated electoral system, which assigns 56 seats to parties based on a form of proportional representation.
The Greens made Manivannan their third ranked candidate in the Lothians region and secured three seats there. Overall, a record 16 Green MSPs were elected, including two trans people.
Along with its success in Scotland, the Green Party netted hundreds of new council seats in local elections across England. It took its first London borough, Hackney, gained control of Norwich and saw two Green Mayoral candidates elected in the capital. However, the party also lost seats in leafier London boroughs and in traditional working-class towns in the North.
Critics claim leader Zack Polanski’s failure to get to grips with anti-Semitism within the party’s ranks was putting some voters off.
The Telegraph has seen posts by Manivannan in which the student bragged about “unfollowing” the Auschwitz museum on social media and supported the vandalism of posters of Israeli hostages taken by Oct 7.
Responding to a post in 2024 by the museum asking for more support on X, Manivannan said: “Just unfollowed you”. A spokesman for the Scottish Greens said the “unfollowing” tweet was a response to statements by the museum which were viewed as downplaying the suffering in Gaza.