A D-Day veteran has been left infuriated after becoming embroiled in a costly immigration row that led him to fear being deported from the UK.

Canadian national Bob Roberts had to pay £658 for a passport stamp to avoid the threat of being excluded from his adopted country.

The great-grandfather has lived in Bournemouth for 63 years after marrying his English bride at the end of World War II and has been granted indefinite leave to remain here.

Yet at the age of 88, he found himself at the centre of a bureaucratic saga because his new passport was not marked with a stamp to back up his residency.

Recently-widowed Mr Roberts only discovered this when he was stopped by immigration officers after visiting the site in Holland where he was wounded in the war.

He was issued with a three month stay of execution stamp, leaving him to believe he would be excluded from the UK if he didn’t get the matter resolved in that time frame.

Mr Roberts, who lives in Bournemouth’s War Memorial Homes, was forced to travel 100 miles to an immigration centre in Croydon to get the matter resolved.

He had to queue up for three hours and pay the ‘extortionate’ fee to get his Canadian passport issued with the correct stamp.

His family are outraged at the way he was treated and have made an official complaint to Immigration minister Damian Green.

Mr Roberts, who has four children, 10 grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren, said he was left bewildered by the experience.

He said: “My right to remain in the UK indefinitely was established back in 1989 and I still have the original letter to prove it.

“Yet when I entered the bureaucratic process with the Home Office that didn’t matter.

“There were no allowances for the fact that I have lived here for 63 years, have paid taxes and National Insurance virtually all my working life and have a large family here.”

His granddaughter Melanie Roberts, 34, said: “I am shocked and dismayed at the way he has been treated.

“My grandfather was left bewildered, upset and infuriated by the whole experience.”

The family has since received a response from the Home Office’s UK Border Agency which insisted his case was handled correctly.

A spokesman for the UK Border Agency said: “Foreign residents of the UK must be able to show they are entitled to live here when they travel into the country.

“Mr Roberts was stopped because the new Canadian passport he was carrying did not contain a stamp showing he has permission to live in the UK.

“Fees are made clear to applicants before they apply.

“They are set at a level which aims to recover the cost of processing an application and include a contribution towards the cost of operating immigration controls.

“People need to apply to the UK Border Agency whenever they want a new stamp in a foreign passport and Mr Roberts has recently done so successfully.”