Yes British Citizens have to meet the means test. A British citizen is obviously not an Asylum seeker. An Asylum seeker who wanted to follow this process, can't like his family very much if he stays in the UK for 5 years after being granted leave, applies and is granted citizenship before inviting his wife to join him. This with a backdrop of being able to fast track the process using his refugee status, in significantly less than half the time.
It's currently taking up to 3 years to process asylum seeker. There's no mention of any fast tracking for specific asylum seekers under the Family Reunion scheme. It can apply for extending the stay, or for applicants already in UK, but not for those outside the UK.
It's easily understandable that an asylum seekers only manages to regain contact with their partner or child after 5 years.
You describe an arduous process, can you show an example of a country that does not take steps to secure and prove the identity of a person applying to become a citizen?
I'm referring to an arduous process of a child, perhaps a virtually orphaned under 18 year old in war torn region, that has no easy access to a UK Visa Application centre, proving his or her ID, age, accessing a centre, providing biometric data, and proving their relationship to the asylum seeker already in UK.
For instance, (let's stay with Djibouti for now) an applicant going to a UK Visa Application centre from Djibouti to Addis Ababa (probably the nearest) would have a round trip of about 2,000 kilometres. Or they could try their hand at crossing the Red Sea to Yemen.. If they went via the normal route to Yemen (Sanaa) it would require a round trip of over 10,000 kilometres.
Pat doesn't apologise when he's wrong, it would be a full time job for him. He prefers to keep changing his argument until eventually, some of it fits somewhere.
Here is another example - he keeps posting this.. I've provided links to the legislation, two pieces of case law and the CPS charging standard.
You'd be better off arguing your point rather than being insulting.
But he keeps saying this:
Section 31 of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 (already provided link) provides a statutory defence for refugees committing particular offences, providing they satisfy stated conditions.
The applicable offences under section 31(3) are:
- Part 1 of the Forgery and Counterfeiting Act 1981 (forgery and connected offences)
- Section 24A of the Immigration Act 1971 (use of deception to obtain or seek to obtain leave to enter or remain or to secure avoidance, postponement or revocation of enforcement action)
- Section 26(1)(d) of the Immigration 1971 Act (falsification of documents)
- Sections 4(1) and 6(1) of the Identity Documents Act 2010
The conditions that must be satisfied for the defence to apply are set out at section 31(1) and (2).
Under section 31(5)
a refugee is not entitled to this defence in relation to any offence committed after making a claim for asylum. You claim or you don't claim, there is no "intending to claim"
. Consequently, a defendant who enters the country either clandestinely or legally, claims asylum, and then obtains false documents for use in attempting to travel to another country, would be outside the scope of section 31. This quite clearly impacts an Asylum seeker, intercepted in Italy or France on route to the UK.
The recent judgement made it explicitly clear that minor breaches of immigration law are excusable for those claiming, or intending to claim asylum. It went on to say that any reasonable delay in that application is also excusable.
In the case in question, the appellants (it was an appeal brought against the CPS) were only transiting UK to apply for asylum in Canada.
It went on to say that the CPS should have referred the case to the Home Office because CPS do not have discretion on whether to prosecute or not. The Home Office do have discretion and should not have proceeded with the prosecution under the circumstances.
It's pointless quoting laws that are excusable under certain circumstances.
As I replied to Odds, under some circumstances, minor breaches are excusable.