I mentioned on Monday that I’d been in Court that day but didn’t say why. The Court was an Asylum and Immigration Tribunal hearing before Judge Froom, it’s purpose was to hear an appeal on behalf of Essy’s daughter, who had been been refused a visa to come to the UK by the British Entry Clearance Officer in Harare.<\/p>\n
We’d sought legal advice in the UK concerning the appeal and because we both work we don’t qualify for legal aid so would have to pay all the legal costs; the lawyers wanted per hour what I earn per week!! Plus VAT, of course. They said they’d need umpteen hours to prepare the appeal, gather evidence etc. and then of course there’d be the full day they must allow for the hearing etc. In other words an awful lot of money. So I decided I’d represent Essy’s daughter at the hearing myself! I guess that the vast majority of these cases are asylum appeals where the appellant is unlikely to be working and therefore gets free legal representation. Essy’s daughter’s appeal was against a refusal to issue her with a visa enabling her to travel to the UK and not an asylum case.<\/p>\n
Prior to the hearing I’d written to the Entry Clearance Officer in Harare asking that the decision to deny be reviewed and gave my reasons for believing the original decision to be flawed. It was when the original decision was upheld that I started the appeal process in the UK. This letter to the Entry Clearance Officer was included in the bundle before the Court and led the Judge to ask if I was legally trained “No, Sir” I replied “Just a little research, Google is my friend”. I don’t know if he thought I was mad but he did smile. The Judge was surprised that we had no qualified legal representation but accepted that it did not prevent the hearing taking place. So the Home Office had a nice, smart Solicitor with a sack truck loaded with papers and legal books representing the Entry Clearance Officer, Harare and Essy’s daughter had me :-(<\/p>\n
The result? We won!!!! Unless the Home Office apply to the High Court for a review of the decision (that is very rare), which they must do within 5 days if they wish to fight on, the Judge directs that “entry clearance be granted to the appellant.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I mentioned on Monday that I’d been in Court that day but didn’t say why. The Court was an Asylum and Immigration Tribunal hearing before Judge Froom, it’s purpose was to hear an appeal on behalf of Essy’s daughter, who had been been refused a visa to come to the UK by the British Entry […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/loades.net\/megabusblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/loades.net\/megabusblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/loades.net\/megabusblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/loades.net\/megabusblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/loades.net\/megabusblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/loades.net\/megabusblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/loades.net\/megabusblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/loades.net\/megabusblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/loades.net\/megabusblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}