Albanian immigrant dwelling in UK illegally can keep as a result of deportation could be ‘unduly harsh’ on daughter who he ‘spent numerous time taking to ballet’, choose guidelines
An immigrant living in the UK illegally has been allowed to stay because deporting him would be ‘unduly harsh’ on his daughter who he ‘spent a lot of time taking to ballet’, a judge has ruled.
The Albanian national, 40, who was granted anonymity, was previously deported from Britain but re-entered the country and has lived here unlawfully since 2016.
He was set to be removed from the UK, but a tribunal judge ruled that doing so would be ‘unduly harsh’ on his daughter.
This was despite the fact that he is not with her mother and does not even appear on his daughter’s birth certificate.
The immigrant’s daughter and her mother both have refugee status and cannot return to Albania. Therefore if he was deported, they would not be able to visit him.
The mother told the tribunal that he ‘meant everything’ to their daughter, and he ‘spent a lot of time and money on taking her to ballet, to parties and other places, as well as attending her parents’ evenings’.
His daughter’s school said the child was so concerned about the risk he might be deported that they had put in place regular sessions to support her.
Arguing against keeping him in the UK, the Home Office said he ‘did not have a genuine and subsisting relationship with his daughter’ and ‘there was no evidence of any relationship between them before 2022’ – six years after his unlawful re-entry.
An immigrant who has lived in the UK illegally for nine years has been allowed to stay in the UK following a ruling from the Upper Tribunal Immigration and Asylum Chamber (pictured)
A map of Algeria, where the immigrant in from. He was previously deported from Britain but re-entered the country and has lived here unlawfully since 2016
First-tier Tribunal Judge Fraser Latta accepted this evidence, and found that the daughter was ‘a vulnerable child’.
The judge accepted that he collected her from school four or five times per week and saw her at the weekends.
He concluded that there was a genuine and subsisting relationship between them and that separating the respondent and his daughter would be unduly harsh.
The Home Office appealed the decision because the judge had not given good reasons to believe the Independent Social Worker’s evidence.
It added that the judge hadn’t properly directed himself on the legal meaning of ‘unduly harsh’.
However Judge John Jolliffe said that the Home Office had not ‘taken steps to challenge the evidence’.
Judge Jolliffe said: ‘Losing physical contact with her father would be detrimental and would have a significant impact on her, such that to do so would meet the high threshold of being unduly harsh.
‘The Tribunal might have formed a different view of that issue if the Home Office had advanced evidence to counter the reports of the independent social worker, or if the Home Office had taken steps to challenge that evidence, for example through cross-examination.
‘If one or both of those steps had been taken, the task of the judge resolving the issue would have been more complex, and the Tribunal might well have expected more reasoning.
‘However, the Home Office chose not to take either of those steps. In those circumstances, the reasoning is legally sufficient.”
