important letter to my college application department

Hi,
I'm writing an appeal letter to the admission department at a college in London UK. Basically they decided that I should pay overseas student fees even though I'm an EU citizen. The difference would be 8k dollars vs 31k dollars, and as you can imagine I'm a little concerned of its outcome.
I've been living in an english speaking country for the past five years, but my first language is italian and sometimes I do make some mistakes. I would appreciate if anyone could proof read this letter and give me any advice you think might be useful to convince the reader. This is supposed to be a pretty formal letter and I'm looking for grammar mistakes, prepositions mixups (by vs for vs to etc) and sentence structuring, and also if the whole letter makes sense to you.
Constructive critic is very welcome,
Thank you all so much!!!!
Damiano
__________________________________________________ __

Object:
To appeal the fee status assessment for this fall’s MSc in Biochemical Engineering at UCL London.

Dear Ms xxxxxxxx,
I’m writing this appeal letter to you because I think the fee status assessment made on my application for next fall Master of Science course did not take into consideration many factors that are important to accurately determine my status as either an home or overseas student.
I was born in Italy where I lived for most of my life. When I was 25, just after graduating, I decided to move to the United States to further my education. I ended up instead finding employment in my field and I never went back to college. I recently just turned 30 and having my application to UCL been successful, I’m extremely excited to come back to Europe and continue my education at such a respected institution.
In these past five years I worked for several labs and my most recent occupation has been as an Associate Scientist for a pharmaceutical company called xxxxxxxxxx in San Diego California. My contract ended at the end of last March for a site closure and as a result I’ve been laid off.
During this time here I’ve kept in close contact with my relatives in my home town Rome where I’ve been going back every chance I got. Before leaving for the States I inherited a house from my grandparents and I decided to rent it out to tenants to partially support my life here. As a result I’ve been back several times, at times for few months mainly to carry out renovation works, and to meet new tenants. In the past three years I’ve been back to EU for a total of about seven months total. I’ve regularly paid property and income (rental) taxes to my government and supported local economy by hiring workers to carry out restructuring work.
My employer, understanding my personal situation, gave me leave of absence for the time needed in which I was not receiving a salary.
In July 2010 I became a US citizen by naturalization by marriage.

I know that to be considered a home student on top of EU citizenship status there is also the rule of not accepting permanent employment outside of the EU in the three year period before the start date, but I feel that my situation is very border line and a more careful consideration would be greatly appreciated.

I’m including rental agreements and real estate ownership documents to support my statements.

Warm Regards,
Damiano xxxxxx

My personal view is that you should stick to the important point:

You are a citizen of the EU, holding an Italian passport. You were born in Italy, and lived there for the first 25 years of your life. You own property in Italy, and pay the necessary Italian taxes.

Unfortunately, the rules state: you must have been ordinarily resident in the European Economic Area (EEA) and/or Switzerland and/or the overseas territories for the three years before the 'first day of the first academic year of the course'

So, you need to justify your failure to meet this requirement. You might consider something along the lines of:

"Although I have lived and worked in the USA for the last five years in order to improve my English language and to raise money for further study, I have retained very close links with Italy, returning several times, often for a few months, to spend time with my family and maintain my property. Indeed, in the last three years I have spent a total of seven months home in Italy. I now wish to carry out my plan of returning home to the European Union to study.

"In view of these circumstances, I would ask you to re-consider your decision to classify me as an overseas student."

that is a great point, thanks for your input