R Ajoh v Secretary of State for The Home Office
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judge | MR JUSTICE COLLINS |
| Judgment Date | 16 May 2006 |
| Neutral Citation | [2006] EWHC 1489 (Admin) |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division (Administrative Court) |
| Date | 16 May 2006 |
| Docket Number | CO/3548/2005 |
[2006] EWHC 1489 (Admin)
IN THE HIGH COURT OF JUSTICE
QUEEN'S BENCH DIVISION
THE ADMINISTRATIVE COURT
Royal Courts of Justice
Strand
London WC2
MR JUSTICE COLLINS
CO/3548/2005
MR A OLLENNU (instructed by Korben & Co) appeared on behalf of the CLAIMANT
MR P PATEL (instructed by Treasury Solicitor) appeared on behalf of the DEFENDANT
(Approved by the Crown)
This is a claim for judicial review of a refusal by the Secretary of State to accede to an application by the claimant that she should be allowed to remain in this country on the basis of her marriage to Mr Anthony Ajoh.
The background, so far as material, I can relate fairly shortly. The claimant is Jamaican. She came here initially in February 1999, having received a six-month visitor's visa. In April she met her husband to be and in June she applied for and was offered a place on a three-year computer studies course at the South Chelsea College in Brixton. She applied for a student visa and was granted a visa for one year and that was extended in October 2000 for a further one year. In the meantime, her daughter joined her in July 2000 and her two sons in December 2000. She was then still married, although I gather the marriage had effectively broken down and she had three children who were, until they came to this country, in Jamaica.
As a result of having to look after her children she was unable to continue her studies and indeed she did not seek an extension of stay on the basis that she should continue her studies. Instead what she did in February 2002 was to claim asylum. That claim was, as she now accepts, an entirely dishonest one. She made allegations that were not true. It is said on her behalf by her lawyers that she was advised and given bad advice by someone that she should make up a story in order to seek to remain in this country. I have little doubt that she may well have been given that sort of advice. Sadly there are around plenty of people who engage themselves in purported advice to those who seek to remain in this country that they should put forward this sort of claim, knowing no doubt that there is a chance that because of the pressure on the Home Office it may take considerable time to deal with it and then there may be rights of appeal which can be pursued. However, as I said, it is entirely accepted that that was not a genuine claim for asylum.
It was in fact refused within a month. There was then an appeal lodged against that decision. In the meantime, the claimant and her present husband had grown closer and they decided to get married. He had been married himself but was divorced. She by then had obtained a divorce from her husband in Jamaica. Accordingly, both were free to marry and they got married on 11 April 2003. She was in fact pregnant at that time, but it is the evidence of both her and her husband that her husband had not been informed about her asylum claim and the pending appeal at that stage.
Following the marriage, she applied to remain as a spouse of Mr Ajoh, himself a United Kingdom citizen. In fact he is a qualified member of the Bar employed by a local authority in a legal position.
On 8 May 2003 the claimant withdrew her asylum appeal and thus was relying entirely upon the application to remain on the basis of marriage.
On 14 May the Home Office wrote the standard letter to her, acknowledging receipt of her application, stating:
"Your application will now be allocated to a caseworker to be considered. As things stand, we expect a caseworker in the Initial Consideration Unit (ICU) to screen the application within the next 5 weeks. At that stage we will either inform you of a decision or give you a progress report on how long it will take to decide. In most cases (about 65%), postal applications are decided upon initial screening by an ICU caseworker but you should makeno assumptions now about how long it may take us to take a decision on your application. Some cases have to be passed to other teams for further enquiries or more detailed consideration. Until the application is screened by a caseworker we cannot tell you whether yours is one that can be completed at the initial screening stage. Our general advice to all applicants is not to make any non-urgent travel plans until they are notified of the decision or receive a progress report."
Unfortunately, as far as the evidence before me goes, the Home Office did nothing until it reached a decision on 22 March 2005, some 22 months later. They did not follow what the letter said would happen in sending a progress report and it is worth noting that the letter says in terms that those who wish to make inquiries should not call in person at the public inquiry office, they should telephone or inquire by writing. However there was nothing to inquire about. So far as the claimant was concerned she no doubt assumed that the matter was being progressed and she may well, one suspects, have become more hopeful as time passed. The result of this delay was that the family life which had been commenced in April 2003 by the marriage —and there is no question that the marriage is a genuine one —continued. Her husband's stepchildren attended school here and became settled in this country. The twins had been born in 2003 and another child has arrived. He was born in September of last year. The result is that, because of the delay, the family life has clearly become the more established in this country.
Decisions of the Court of Appeal make it clear that, generally speaking, in a situation such as this, the Secretary of State is entirely justified in deciding that the need to maintain a proper immigration control will mean that it is not disproportionate to remove, and had the decision been made within a reasonable time it would have been quite impossible to have challenged it. There would have been no wholly exceptional circumstances —which is the test which is to be applied —to justify a conclusion that a decision by the Secretary of State was in any way flawed as a matter of law, if he decided that it was necessary to remove. In this case there is the added factor that the conduct of the claimant was poor in the sense that she deliberately put forward a false claim for asylum in order to delay any removal, and at the time that she and her husband married...
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