JA (Somalia) v Entry Clearance Officer
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | Lord Justice Elias |
| Judgment Date | 25 January 2010 |
| Neutral Citation | [2010] EWCA Civ 95 |
| Court | Court of Appeal (Civil Division) |
| Docket Number | Case No: C5/2009/1914 |
| Date | 25 January 2010 |
[2010] EWCA Civ 95
IN THE COURT OF APPEAL (CIVIL DIVISION)
ON APPEAL FROM THE ASYLUM AND IMMIGRATION TRIBUNAL
Before: Lord Justice Elias
Case No: C5/2009/1914
[AIT No: OA/60518/2007]
THE APPELLANT DID NOT APPEAR AND WAS NOT REPRESENTED.
THE RESPONDENT DID NOT APPEAR AND WAS NOT REPRESENTED.
(As Approved)
Lord Justice Elias:
This is an oral application for permission to appeal, leave having been refused on the papers by Sir Richard Buxton. We have waited a quarter of an hour this morning for anyone to turn up on behalf of the applicant and nobody has. All attempts have been made to try and contact the representatives of the applicant concerned. They have been sent relevant documentation alerting them to today's hearing. There is no explanation as to why they are not here but it appears nobody is coming. What I propose to do is to give judgment on the material I have which includes a detailed skeleton argument lodged on behalf of the applicant, and of course the applicant will have to come back to court if she wishes to have this judgment re-opened, explaining why she was not here and what the difficulties were. I have to say, however, that in the light of the skeleton argument and the matters advanced there, I do not think this appeal has a realistic prospect of success and I agree with Sir Richard Buxton.
The issue very briefly is this. The appellant is a citizen of Somalia who was born on 1 January 1980. She entered into a marriage with the sponsor. She sought to be permitted to have entry clearance in order to live with her husband. In order to do that she had to comply with paragraph 281 of HC295, the burden being on her to show to the normal civil standard that she met the conditions laid down in that paragraph. It is conceded that she meets all of them save for one, and that was the question whether there was a genuine subsisting marriage between the parties.
The issue came first of all before Immigration Judge Powell on 15 May 2007. In a detailed analysis of her appeal against the Secretary of State's refusal to grant entry clearance, he set out the evidence of the parties and he reached certain key conclusions. In particular he found the sponsor to be a wholly unreliable witness without any credibility. Part of the reason for reaching that conclusion was that when seeking asylum many years before, the applicant had told the authorities that his mother had been killed, but in fact later he was submitting to the contrary. There were other reasons too why he did not accept the credibility of the sponsor. He did, however, point out that that did not of itself demonstrate that the marriage was not a valid marriage and that the applicant may still have provided a wholly truthful account of the relationship notwithstanding the sponsor's failure to tell the truth in the past.
However, the judge focused on three other features which he considered demonstrated that there was no genuine marriage. The applicant did not know about her husband's family; she could give no coherent or consistent account of his siblings or cousins, and the judge thought this particularly unusual given the importance of family and friends in Somalian culture. Second, although she knew the sponsor lived in London, she knew nothing more than that. She did not know where he lived or in what circumstances. Thirdly she knew nothing about the sponsor's employment, where he was working, how frequently, whether he was travelling away or anything of that nature. The judge considered that it was inherently unlikely in the circumstances that there was a genuine marriage subsisting and he dismissed the appeal.
A further application was made to the Secretary of State and she provided certain information which had not originally been given to the Secretary of State. This did not dissuade the Secretary of State, who...
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