Iraqi immigrant can stay in UK because his parents sent him
An illegal Iraqi immigrant who arrived in Britain as an unaccompanied child has been allowed to stay because it was not his decision to leave his home country.
An asylum tribunal ruled it would be unfair to deport Akam Abdalkarim because the adults in his life had sent him away when he was 15 years old in the hope he would find a better life.
A judge found that after that he simply 'continued on a path for which he was not initially responsible'.
The 24-year-old is married to an Iranian woman, and together they have a five-year-old child and are expecting their second this summer. The tribunal ruled it would be harsh on his daughter, born in the UK, if he was forced to leave.
It rejected Home Office arguments that it was in the public interest to remove Mr Abdalkarim, who had lived illegally in Britain as an 'overstayer' since arriving as an unaccompanied teenager and put forward 'unreliable claims for asylum in the past'.
The case, disclosed in court papers, is the latest example exposed by The Telegraph where illegal migrants or convicted foreign criminals have used human rights laws to remain in the UK or halt their deportations.
There are a record 41,987 outstanding immigration appeals, largely on human rights grounds, which Labour has pledged to clear by halving the time it takes for them to come to court to just 24 days.
Mr Abdalkarim is from Said Sadiq, a city in the Sulaymaniyah Governorate in Iraq, and is of Kurdish ethnicity.
He left Iraq at the age of 15 and claimed asylum in Slovenia. After telling authorities in the country he had a brother in the UK he was flown here in 2016.
He was 16 when his asylum appeal process began in June 2017, and he has never been granted leave. He married his wife in August 2019 in an Islamic ceremony.
The Home Office alleged Mr Abdalkarim was lying about his wife being pregnant with their second child, however the tribunal ruled he was telling the truth.
The Home Office said he put forward 'unreliable claims for asylum in the past' and that the public interest was in deporting him.
Mr Abdalkarim said he should remain in the UK 'given the length of time both [he] and his wife had lived in the UK' and because he had not been removed by this point.
He argued it would be 'disproportionate' to remove him from his young family and said the separation would have a severe impact.
'Unaccompanied asylum-seeking child'
Upper Tribunal Judge Anna-Rose Landes ruled Mr Abdalkarim's appeal must succeed because of the impact it would have on his daughter and because he did not set the wheels in motion for him to leave Iraq in 2016.
Judge Landes said: 'I note that although he entered the UK unlawfully, he came as an unaccompanied asylum-seeking child brought to the UK because his brother was in the UK.
'Although given the findings of previous judges he must have been an economic migrant, being a child who left Iraq at the age of 15 it is reasonable to infer that the decision to leave for better opportunities elsewhere must have been one taken for him by the adults in his life.
'Again, as with my findings about family life, [Mr Abdalkarim] was in the UK initially being looked after by the local authority and would have been rightly encouraged to form friendships and to begin to integrate into the UK; he has been in the UK for 8.5 years.
'It does add to the public interest in his removal that [Mr Abdalkarim] is an overstayer, but I consider it significant when evaluating the strength of such additional factor that [Mr Abdalkarim] initially came to the UK as a child and... it would have been the choice of adults to send him away from Iraq.
'He remained in the UK after he became adult but that must be seen in the light of his continuing on a path for which he was not initially responsible.
'I find that there [are] exceptional circumstances which outweigh the public interest in removal and mean that the decision is disproportionate.
'[Mr Abdalkarim's] daughter's best interests are a primary consideration, as the decision would separate a father from his daughter born in the UK who is approaching the end of her route to settlement.
'In addition to the daughter's best interests are his family life with his wife and his private life to which I give some weight bearing in mind as I have said that [Mr Abdalkarim] came to the UK as an unaccompanied child and has lived in the UK for 8.5 years since the age of 16.'
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