Appeals on human rights grounds in UK visit visa applications

The Home Office seems to have finally agreed that “human rights” can be triggered in visit visa applications. Even though the right of appeal on HR grounds has always been there, they have pretty much refused to acknowledge it. Now ECO’s will have to consider the human rights aspect (mainly in family visit visa application, of course) if it is included in the application. New guidance to operational ECO’s says :

If you receive a standard visit application where additional/extra information or Part 9 has been completed, you must consider the following:

1. Does the application say that it is a human rights claim?

If no, then proceed to step 2.

If yes, but no reasons are given refuse the claim with no right of appeal.

If yes, and supporting reasons are given then proceed to step 3.

2. Does the application amount to an implied human rights claim if it does not say that it is a human rights claim?

If no, then refuse the claim with no right of appeal.

If yes, then proceed to step 3.

3. Are the matters raised capable of engaging human rights?

If no, then refuse the claim with no right of appeal.

If yes, then proceed to step 4.

4. Does the human rights claim have any prospects of success?

If no, then refuse the claim with a right of appeal.

If yes, then refer the claim to the Referred Cases Unit (RCU).

If a visit visa applicant wants to include a “human rights” aspect to an application, then he/she must do so in the application form itself. Without it, the ECO does not have to look at any possible human rights aspects to the application, and will not grant any right of appeal. The guidance gives fairly narrow areas for establishing that there are human rights grounds, or that the applicant is claiming a right to family life, so any application will have to take this into account. The right of appeal is not automatic. What is does mean, I think, is that if the ECO agrees that there is a right of appeal on human rights grounds then any appeal made will be considered “in the round” by the Immigration Judge in the UK. That means the judge will look at the decision itself, to make sure it is sound and balanced, before considering the human rights aspect. If the judge finds that the decision was erroneous, or wrong, then he will allow the appeal without even having to look at the human rights aspects. In my opinion, that will bring back some of the balance in family visit visa applications, something that may well have been lost when applicants lost the right of appeal in family visit applications.

I have attached the full guidance ( published yesterday) here :

considering_hr_claims_from_visitors_guidance_v1_0_ext.pdf

Tony M