Upper Tribunal (Immigration and asylum chamber), 2021-04-07, PA/04976/2018

Upper Tribunal

(Immigration and Asylum Chamber) Appeal Number: PA/04976/2018

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE blum

Between

SJ

(ANONYMITY DIRECTION MADE)

Appellant

and

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT

Respondent

Representation:

For the appellant: Mr A Khan, counsel, instructed by Thomson & Co Solicitors

For the respondent: Ms A Everett, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer

This decision follows a remote hearing in respect of which there has been no objection by the parties. The form of remote hearing was by video (V), the platform was Skype for Business. A face to face hearing was not held because it was not practicable and all issues could be determined in a remote hearing.

DECISION AND REASONS

Background

1. This is an appeal against the decision of Judge of the First-tier Tribunal Watson (“the judge”) promulgated on 2 March 2020 dismissing the protection and human rights appeal of SJ (“the appellant”) against a decision of the respondent dated 29 March 2018 refusing her protection and human rights claim.

2. The appellant is a female national of Pakistan who was born in 1990. She and her husband married in Pakistan in 2010. They both entered the UK pursuant to grants of visitor entry clearance on 25 August 2014. They applied for leave to remain outside the Immigration Rules, but their applications were refused. The refusal of the applications led to appealable decisions and both the appellant and her husband appealed to the First-tier Tribunal on human rights grounds. The exact basis of their applications and their appeals remains unclear, but it involved a claimed fear from one or both of their families based on their families’ disapproval of the marriage.

3. In a decision promulgated on 14 September 2017 Judge of the First-tier Tribunal Quinn dismissed the human rights appeals of the appellant and her husband. The appeals were advanced, not as protection appeals but as appeals relying on Article 8ECHR. The decision was therefore determined by reference to the ‘balance of probabilities’ standard and not the lower ‘real risk’ or ‘reasonable degree of likelihood’ standard applicable in protection appeals. Judge Quinn drew an adverse inference against the appellant based on discrepant evidence relating to her instruction of solicitors. Judge Quinn additionally made adverse credibility findings in respect of evidence from the appellant’s husband relating to the payment of rent on a property in which the couple had resided. Judge Quinn found that both the appellant and her husband had made false representations to the Entry Clearance Officer in respect of their visitor applications. Judge Quinn found that the appellant’s husband would be able to find employment in Pakistan and there was no reason to think that he could not find accommodation in which both he and the appellant could live. Judge Quinn noted, as a matter of significance, that neither the appellant nor her husband had, at that stage, made asylum claims in the United Kingdom. Judge Quinn did not find the reasons given by the appellant’s husband for failing to do this to be “at all convincing.” The appellant’s husband was an educated man but purported not to know about asylum. He claimed during the hearing that he came to the UK because his life and that of the appellant were in danger. He claimed that he had been told by his family to leave his wife or they would kill him. Judge Quinn noted that “it was possible that both appellants were withholding an asylum claim to await the outcome of this appeal.” Judge Quinn considered that if the appellant and her husband had a genuine fear of being killed, then there was every reason for them to make an asylum claim as soon as they arrived in the United Kingdom. Judge Quinn stated, “the fact that they had not done so over all the years they have been in the UK has damaged their credibility.”

4. Judge Quinn noted the absence of any medical evidence to detail any injuries suffered by the appellant and, in light of the judge’s other findings, rejected the appellant’s credibility on the issue of violence. Judge Quinn believed that the alleged threat of violence had been fabricated to bolster their claim to stay in the UK. Judge Quinn found that the appellant and her husband were prepared to use any means at their disposal, including deceit, to stay in the United Kingdom. Judge Quinn found that even if the family had disagreed with the marriage she did not find that threats had been made to kill both the appellant and her husband, and even if she was wrong about this the appellant and her husband could relocate within Pakistan as there was no reason to believe that their families could find them in a country with such a large population.

5. Shortly after the dismissal of her human rights appeal and that of her husband, the appellant lodged an asylum application. She maintained, so far as I can tell for the first time, that her mother was an Ahmadi (her father was a Sunni Muslim) and that she and her husband would face persecution in Pakistan because her husband’s family became aware that she was Ahmadi. In her asylum interview, conducted on 22 March 2018, she claimed she had never followed her Ahmadi teaching openly (Q 85), that she only had some basic information about the Ahmadi (Q 131 - 134), and stated that her marriage to her Sunni Muslim husband would not be accepted in Pakistan (Q84). I make the observation that the appellant did not mention anything about her husband becoming interested in the Ahmadi faith in her interview, although in his statement of 19 January 2020 the husband claimed (at paragraph 16) to have accepted Ahmadiyya Islam as his religion around mid-February 2018. In her decision of 29 March 2018 the respondent rejected the appellant’s claim to have experienced family problems due to her marriage and rejected the appellant’s claim to be Ahmadi. The appellant appealed the respondent’s decision to the First-tier Tribunal pursuant to s.82 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002. An initial decision dismissing the appeal was overturned by the Upper Tribunal and remitted back to the First-tier Tribunal for a fresh hearing.

The Decision of the First-tier Tribunal

6. The appellant’s case before the First-tier Tribunal was that she had now embraced the Ahmadi faith and her husband had converted to Ahmadiyya. As such they (or at least the appellant’s husband) would be considered an apostate. They would face persecution on account of their Ahmadi faith and because their families, and in particular the husband’s family, disapproved of the marriage.

7. The judge heard oral evidence from the appellant and her husband, and both were underwent detailed cross-examination.

8. Having set out the relevant legal framework and principles applying to protection appeals, and having directed herself according to the Devaseelan guidelines (Devaseelan v SSHD[2002] UKIAT 00702) in respect of Judge Quinn’s decision, the judge summarised the decision of Judge Quinn and the evidence before her. In so doing the judge reminded herself, at [17], that Judge Quinn’s adverse credibility findings were made by reference to the ‘balance of probabilities’ standard.

9. The judge made comprehensive adverse credibility findings against the appellant noting, inter alia, that neither she nor her husband made any mention of her Ahmadi faith in the appeal before Judge Quinn. The judge found this undermined the claim by the appellant and her husband that they were adherents to the Ahmadi faith [17]. The judge found she could attach little weight to a psychiatric report or to a large number of documents provided by the appellant, some of which were said to have been obtained from Pakistan and some issued by the Ahmadi community in the UK. The judge rejected the appellant’s claim to have been assaulted by her husband’s family. The judge found that the timing of the protection claim and the dates on which the documentary evidence was produced damaged the appellant’s claim to be a genuine and active follower of the Ahmadi faith. The judge was not satisfied that both families refused to accept the marriage in light of her findings in respect of the appellant’s veracity and, as the judge only had the appellant’s and her husband’s own evidence about the alleged assault on her, “and in view of [the judge’s] severe doubts about her truthfulness” the judge was not satisfied that the assault occurred [32].

10. Applying WA (Pakistan) v SSHD[2019] EWCA Civ 302 the judge was not satisfied that the appellant had any intention or wish to practice or manifest aspects of the Ahmadi faith in such a way that would expose her to a real risk of persecution in Pakistan [34]. The judge found that the appellant had no beliefs that would lead her to practice the faith. Nor was the judge satisfied that any profession of the Ahmadi faith by the appellant in a...