Surinder Singh and Brexit

[Mymorg]

I have a eea family permit until 2018 (though my passport expires before then) so, for people that have already taken the Surinder Singh route, is there any speculation on whats going to happen after brexit? I'll probably miss the article 50 2 year mark by a few months. Should people like us just expect to pack our bags? any general consensus appreciated. Theresa May is the one that put us in this mess anyway, and now shes PM. Its looking quite grim for those of us who made it this far and now once again have to worry about being separated from out familes.

[Casa]

I have a eea family permit until 2018 (though my passport expires before then) so, for people that have already taken the Surinder Singh route, is there any speculation on whats going to happen after brexit? I'll probably miss the article 50 2 year mark by a few months. Should people like us just expect to pack our bags? any general consensus appreciated. Theresa May is the one that put us in this mess anyway, and now shes PM. Its looking quite grim for those of us who made it this far and now once again have to worry about being separated from out familes.

This isn't a general discussion on the SS route. Please post this in your own thread.

[noajthan]

Taking above hint...

To avoid confusion & jumbled responses, I have moved your question to its own thread (this one).

[Richard W]

The timing may not be as bad as you think. The 5 years starts when you get back to the UK, not when the residence card was issued. On the other hand, 2 years is not a fixed time. It may be less by agreement with a qualified majority of the other countries, and may be more by unanimous agreement.

The other problem is that acquiring 'permanent residence' may not mean a lot by 2018 - it could just mean until the UK leaves the EEA.

Another question is why you used Surinder Singh. If it's because a single income wasn't enough to being a spouse in, then FLR(M), or even FLR(O) with a British citizen anchor baby, may be available. I believe you can use both incomes if you're already lawfully resident in the UK. The problem with an anchor baby is that a British citizen might not be good enough, as its current sufficiency seems to derive from Zambrano. None of this helps if SS was to bring a stepchild or a parent in.

[Casa]

Bad advice on the 'anchor baby'. The HO have become wise to this and refusals for applications made on this basis are becoming increasingly common...in the same way as 'anchor marriages' are.

[Mymorg]

So wait, the only advice you have for me is to get pregnant in the hopes that I can stay in the U.K. with my family? Are you joking?

[Casa]

So wait, the only advice you have for me is to get pregnant in the hopes that I can stay in the U.K. with my family? Are you joking?

That was Richard W's suggestion, which for a variety of reasons, I strongly advise you don't follow.
Best to sit tight and (to use fellow moderator noajthan's line) 'trust in the British sense of fair play' for those who already have a foot on the EEA route to settlement.

[Richard W]

So wait, the only advice you have for me is to get pregnant in the hopes that I can stay in the U.K. with my family? Are you joking?

I saw it the other way. The Home Office doesn't like the bad publicity of kicking out the wife and children of a British citizen, especially when the wife has already been allowed in potentially permanently. (I find the term 'temporary resident' for those admitted for settlement offensive.) The rules allow them to allow the family to stay, at least if the only problem is that they have fallen on hard times.

Noajthan talks of the sense of 'fair play'. There is a countervailing view that most Surinder Singh cases are cheating.

[noajthan]

I saw it the other way. The Home Office doesn't like the bad publicity of kicking out the wife and children of a British citizen, especially when the wife has already been allowed in potentially permanently. (I find the term 'temporary resident' for those admitted for settlement offensive.) The rules allow them to allow the family to stay, at least if the only problem is that they have fallen on hard times.

Noajthan talks of the sense of 'fair play'. There is a countervailing view that most Surinder Singh cases are cheating.

As you are discovering, there is a real world where ill-thought out, fanciful or theoretical 'solutions' can upset or offend people (quite apart from whether they are realistic and practical).

Leveraging the HO's supposed or imagined sensitivity to publicity is hardly a rationale on which to stagemanage a wife (or a husband) or a child.
And there have been a bunch of high profile cases of wives etc being kicked out of UK especially under UK regulations.

There is no reference to SS being cheating in EEA Regulations nor in relevant case law.
EU law has always had provisions and dictats against abuse anyway.
And Surinder Singh is not abuse, nor is it a legal loophole - it is soundly based on case law. Restating the misconceptions of the illinformed (whoever they are) does not validate such misconceptions.

There is no good or bad EU migration route, there are just options for routes depending on a number of factors.
And my reference to "fair play" was not specifically in the context of the SS route as I am indifferent (in an economic sense) to SS versus any other EU migration trajectory.

[vinny]

There is no reference to SS being cheating in EEA Regulations nor in relevant case law.
EU law has always had provisions and dictats against abuse anyway.
And Surinder Singh is not abuse, nor is it a legal loophole - it is soundly based on case law. Restating the misconceptions of the illinformed (whoever they are) does not validate such misconceptions

See also Home Office refuses Surinder Singh case because applicant knows law!

Home Office's misconceptions affect applicants.

[noajthan]

See also Home Office refuses Surinder Singh case because applicant knows law!

Home Office's misconceptions affect applicants.

Well-known article but thanks Vinny. And one would expect an applicant's representatives to fight that tooth and nail.

That argument doesn't sit well with cutbacks and restrictions on UK legal aid that forces more and more citizens to know the law (and even to represent themselves in many areas).
I have also heard of cases where a judge has apparently praised a litigant who represented themselves.

[Richard W]

And there have been a bunch of high profile cases of wives etc being kicked out of UK especially under UK regulations.

Could you please point me to an example where there was a British child and the spouse being kicked out had the requisite immigration status to apply to remain. In the apparently relevant examples I can remember, it appeared that the spouse being removed had entered on a visitor's visa and had no later leave or exemption.

Now, there has been a case of a criminal mother (Abu Hamza's ex-daughter-in-law) of a British child (the parents were divorced) being allowed to remain in the UK apparently only because of the rights of the child as an EU citizen, but I hope this is relevant only to a few SS cases. Severe criminality would normally defeat an application under FLR(M) or FLR(O). Note that this would have been a deportation, not a removal.

[Casa]

I'm sure that noajthan is referring to cases under UK regulations where the regulations weren't met. i.e without the requisite immigration status.

[noajthan]

And there have been a bunch of high profile cases of wives etc being kicked out of UK especially under UK regulations.

Could you please point me to an example where there was a British child and the spouse being kicked out had the requisite immigration status to apply to remain. In the apparently relevant examples I can remember, it appeared that the spouse being removed had entered on a visitor's visa and had no later leave or exemption.

...

I don't subcribe to the correlation with negative publicity.
You can trawl WWW just as easily.

Even in the Daily Fail , for every 10 or 20 of their dearly beloved immigrant-bashing stories, there is quite often, and presumably for 'balance'. either a 'kindly <alien of some ethnicity> helps old English lady in trouble' or 'saves an English girl's puppy' etc etc.
And then, tucked in amongst them, is a 'shock horror! nice Anglo Saxon middle-class English-speaking family (just like you dear reader) returning from their extended expat gig in Dubai or Australia and screwed up one of the spouse's ILR'-type stories.
Or the 'someone been here 50 years, now a grandparent and heart and soul of community/WI/Mason's Lodge (etc), thought they were as English as John Bull, Yorkshire pudding and Jack Frost but ignorant parents screwed up the paperwork and now they're an illegal'.

HO invariably plays hard ball, and just as FO never (or hardly ever) negoiates with terrorists, HO never (or hardly ever) bows to publicity.

[Richard W]

I'm sure that noajthan is referring to cases under UK regulations where the regulations weren't met. i.e without the requisite immigration status.

So none of the generically proffered examples are relevant! Or Casa has misunderstood what I said. For example, a foreign mother cannot successfully apply to stay with husband and child using FLR(O) if she is present in the UK as a visitor. She does not have the requisite immigration status to be eligible to apply.

However, in the OP's case, it's down to whether the UK sees fit to expel members of part-British families just because the rules have changed. The precedent of dual nationals and changes to the Surinder Singh regulations are promising for the OP - those who had simply demonstrably relied on earlier versions of the EEA regulations were allowed to continue to benefit. The OP has the simple demonstration in the form of a residence card. That gives the OP Plan A. Unfortunately, in her case, we can't see a Plan B. Perhaps there is some reason why her husband can't be expected to go and live in her country.

[noajthan]

I don't subscribe to the correlation between HO and negative publicity. The HO frequently demonstrates it is almost as impervious as some members here.
General examples from memory are a nod in that direction; (I have neither time nor patience nor interest to conduct a double-blind placebo-controlled research project on this).
That is all.

I do expect some sort of transitional arrangements to be made for Brexit. That is all.

The rest of this topic is fairly meaningless and going nowhere fast as there are too many unknowns.