Rejected citizenship application

[Raa]

Hi all

I am wondering whether you can give me some advice, before deciding whether I should see an immigration lawyer.

I am a EU citizen and I have lived in the UK for 7 years. I am also married to a British citizen and therefore my application was made based in this fact. I have recently received a letter from the HO saying that my application for citizenship was declined because I was refused a residence card/blue card in 2010 when I was a student and working. Their reason is that I have not been compliant with the UK immigration laws as I was occasionally working over 20 hours a week while being a full time student.

As I am being married to a British citizen, I believe that they should have only taken into account my circumstances for the past three years. Is this correct?

Additionally, my friend's application (she has exactly the same circumstances as me except that she is not married) has been recently approved. How are they assessing these applications at the HO? It seems to me that they are not consistent when dealing with these cases...

Could you please advise?

Many thanks.

[chocolateorange88]

As of December 2014, they started looing into peoples history for up to 10 years prior to applying for nauralisation.

Your friend was lucky.... its ultimately down to the caseworkers and how fair/lenient they want to be or in this case...not very.

Sorry for your refusal. However, working over 20 hours as a student is not allowed, you shouldnt have done it and im sorry to sound frank , this is your karma biting u back!

[vinny]

Which EU country are you from? Were you required to register for WRS prior to working?

[Raa]

Hi vinny

I am Romanian and I was required to apply for a work permit at the time. As a student I was allowed to work for 20 hours per week and for this they issued the 'yellow card' in 2009.

In 2010 I applied for the full work permit - the 'blue card' or the Registration Card. My application was rejected in 2010 but accepted in 2011 when I applied again after completing a MSc course.

Considering that they are obviously not consistent when considering their guidance and making the decisions of who is granted the naturalisation, is it worth appealing their decision thorough a lawyer. The fact that I am married to a British citizen does not count anymore?

Thank you.

[jingzh]

Hi vinny

I am Romanian and I was required to apply for a work permit at the time. As a student I was allowed to work for 20 hours per week and for this they issued the 'yellow card' in 2009.

In 2010 I applied for the full work permit - the 'blue card' or the Registration Card. My application was rejected in 2010 but accepted in 2011 when I applied again after completing a MSc course.

Considering that they are obviously not consistent when considering their guidance and making the decisions of who is granted the naturalisation, is it worth appealing their decision thorough a lawyer. The fact that I am married to a British citizen does not count anymore?

Thank you.

I'm sorry about your refusal.
I wouldn't waste money on lawyers if I were you.
As much as I think you had bad luck, it's a correct decision from HO. They are constantly changing rules of the game. Unfortunately they have counted this as our responsibility to fully understand their changes before application.

[saanju9]

Hi vinny

I am Romanian and I was required to apply for a work permit at the time. As a student I was allowed to work for 20 hours per week and for this they issued the 'yellow card' in 2009.

In 2010 I applied for the full work permit - the 'blue card' or the Registration Card. My application was rejected in 2010 but accepted in 2011 when I applied again after completing a MSc course.

Considering that they are obviously not consistent when considering their guidance and making the decisions of who is granted the naturalisation, is it worth appealing their decision thorough a lawyer. The fact that I am married to a British citizen does not count anymore?

Thank you.

I am sorry for your refusal
Could you tell us how the home office came to know that you are working more than 20 hrs back in 2010.
Were you working more than 20hrs in 2009 before you applied for blue card in 2010 or did you worked after getting rejected in 2010 and before 2011 when it is accepted

[Obie]

Hi all

I am wondering whether you can give me some advice, before deciding whether I should see an immigration lawyer.

I am a EU citizen and I have lived in the UK for 7 years. I am also married to a British citizen and therefore my application was made based in this fact. I have recently received a letter from the HO saying that my application for citizenship was declined because I was refused a residence card/blue card in 2010 when I was a student and working. Their reason is that I have not been compliant with the UK immigration laws as I was occasionally working over 20 hours a week while being a full time student.

As I am being married to a British citizen, I believe that they should have only taken into account my circumstances for the past three years. Is this correct?

Additionally, my friend's application (she has exactly the same circumstances as me except that she is not married) has been recently approved. How are they assessing these applications at the HO? It seems to me that they are not consistent when dealing with these cases...

Could you please advise?

Many thanks.

well the refusal is funny. If EU nationals are not subject to the immigration rules, how could it be said, that they are in breach of the rules?

[secret.simon]

As I am being married to a British citizen, I believe that they should have only taken into account my circumstances for the past three years. Is this correct?

That assumption is correct in a way and incorrect in a way.

In order to qualify for citizenship, you need to have been free of immigration controls for at least a year. Being free of Immigration controls means either having ILR status (if you are non-EEA) or PR (Permanent Residence) status, if you are a non-British EEA citizen or related to one.

PR status is earned after five continuous years of exercising treaty rights in the UK. Treaty rights are exercised by
a) Working
b) Seeking work
c) Studying (requires either CSI-private health insurance-or an non-UK EHIC card)
d) Self-sufficiency (requires CSI-private health insurance)

Because PR takes 5 years and you need at least 1 year of PR to qualify for British citizenship, the Home Office would scrutinise six years of your history to decide whether you had earned PR atleast a year ago. If that had gone through, the Home Office would then look at the qualifying parameters (absence, presence in the country three years ago, etc) of the past three years.

I am not au fait with the requirements for Romanian citizens exercising treaty rights by studying, except that I am certain that it would have required having either private health insurance or a Romanian EHIC card. Did you have either of those for the entire time that you were a student?

The caseworker must have seen that there is no proof of the health insurance and hence must have assesed you as a worker. Again, I do not know what the transitional arrangements for Romanian citizens were. But if you were supposed to have registered under a scheme like WRS (which I believe was only for A8 countries), then work done while not registered would not count for the purposes of treaty rights.

My calculation is that as you were registered to work in 2011, your clock for exercising treaty rights started then and so, you would achieve PR status in 2016 and would be eligible for citizenship in 2017.

Therefore, I believe that the Home Office came to the right conclusion for the wrong reason. I do not believe that appealing would help as you actually do not satisfy the conditions for PR, let alone citizenship.

As regards your friend, when did s/he get the blue card? Alternatively, did she have private health insurance or a Romanian EHIC card covering the time she was a student?

[noajthan]

As I am being married to a British citizen, I believe that they should have only taken into account my circumstances for the past three years. Is this correct?

That assumption is correct in a way and incorrect in a way.

In order to qualify for citizenship, you need to have been free of immigration controls for at least a year. Being free of Immigration controls means either having ILR status (if you are non-EEA) or PR (Permanent Residence) status, if you are a non-British EEA citizen or related to one.

...

Because PR takes 5 years and you need at least 1 year of PR to qualify for British citizenship, the Home Office would scrutinise six years of your history to decide whether you had earned PR atleast a year ago. If that had gone through, the Home Office would then look at the qualifying parameters (absence, presence in the country three years ago, etc) of the past three years.

...

My calculation is that as you were registered to work in 2011, your clock for exercising treaty rights started then and so, you would achieve PR status in 2016 and would be eligible for citizenship in 2017.

...

Some points of detail relevant to this case...

OP's timeline, as originally stated, refers to his 7 years in UK.
So there is the potential to have acquired PR within a continuous 5-year wedge of that 7 years.

The one advantage of marriage to a BC (in an immigration context) is it removes the requirement for 12 months of freedom from immigration time restrictions before applying the privilege of citizenship.

Section 2 of HO guidance booklet explains the 3 years versus 5 years question in the context of EEA applicants;
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/s ... n_2015.pdf

[Obie]

Just out of interest, did the 2 previous posters manage to grasp or graple with the basis of the OP's refusal, before dwelling on PR?

[secret.simon]

The one advantage of marriage to a BC (in an immigration context) is it removes the requirement for 12 months of freedom from immigration time restrictions before applying the privilege of citizenship.

Quite correct. I had a Natalie Bennettesque brain freeze.

Another possible interpretation of the Home Office letter is that as he had worked more hours than he was allowed to while he had a yellow (presumably student) card, he has failed the good character requirement, which could mean a ban for 10 years.

The Good Character Requirement

9.7 Evasion of immigration control
The decision maker will normally refuse an application if within the 10 years preceding the application the person has not been compliant with immigration requirements, including but not limited to having:
a. failed to report
b. failed to comply with any conditions imposed under the Immigration Acts
c. been detected working in the UK without permission

[noajthan]

Just out of interest, did the 2 previous posters manage to grasp or graple with the basis of the OP's refusal, before dwelling on PR?

I am not authorised to speak for the other poster, however:.

1) I can confirm I grasped the basis of OP's refusal.

I concluded s/he did not include enough information for a full post-mortem analysis.
As OP has not been active for several weeks I did not pursue this.

2) As it appears to be of interest, I decided to grapple with OP's specific question which was:

... they should have only taken into account my circumstances for the past three years. Is this correct

As OP appears inactive I answered the question by providing information which can also inform other members.

I believe this approach
a) aligns with the purpose of the forum
&
b) maximises the utility of the answer for the benefit of others.

[noajthan]

Another possible interpretation of the Home Office letter is that as he had worked more hours than he was allowed to while he had a yellow (presumably student) card, he has failed the good character requirement, which could mean a ban for 10 years.

The Good Character Requirement

9.7 Evasion of immigration control
The decision maker will normally refuse an application if within the 10 years preceding the application the person has not been compliant with immigration requirements, including but not limited to having:
a. failed to report
b. failed to comply with any conditions imposed under the Immigration Acts
c. been detected working in the UK without permission

I concur.
It is a HO tactic of attrition that is not unheard of.

For example, (as I understand it), A2 nationals historically had somewhat EU-unfriendly & restrictive conditions accompanying their 'yellow' student cards;
eg work limited to 20 hours a week in term time & etc, like this:
http://www.essex.ac.uk/immigration/documents/brwork.pdf.

In the Kafkaesque world of the HO one could imagine caseworkers being incentivised to catch out studious, hard-working & law-abiding Europeans' transgressions of such rules
&
then, in the Alice in Wonderland sector of such a universe, translating such transgressions into arbitary & unscientific (yet hard to challenge) indicators of 'bad character'.

E.g. ref. HO guidance on this amorphous area of immigration law:
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/s ... _D_v02.pdf

[ArtfulBadger]

This could possibly explain the delay in my application, as I could be caught in the student-worker vortex (as I have been both simultaneously), despite being an EU citizen married to a British citizen for 6 years.

This does not bode well...

[Siraj ud-Daulah]

Wholeheartedly agree with you noajthan..

[secret.simon]

In the Kafkaesque world of the HO one could imagine caseworkers being incentivised to catch out studious, hard-working & law-abiding Europeans' transgressions of such rules
&
then, in the Alice in Wonderland sector of such a universe, translating such transgressions into arbitary & unscientific (yet hard to challenge) indicators of 'bad character'.

I would disagree to some extent on this point.

If a person knowingly transgresses the rules-and in these cases, the students would have known of them because it would be mentioned in their paperwork and probably on their card as well. Besides, ignorantia juris non excusat-, I think it certainly reflects negatively on his character. Whether it is significant enough to merit withholding citizenship is a point for argument.

One point in favouring of withholding citizenship in such cases is that it is practically impossible to reverse. So, it should be harder to acquire.

At the end of the day, it comes to proportionality. It would be disproportionate to withhold citizenship from the OP if tigerman in this thread has been granted it.

As for Kafka, way too other-dimensional for my tastes.