Rasheed v Secretary of State for the Home Department
2014
COURT OF APPEAL (CRIMINAL DIVISION)
United Kingdom
CORAM
- LORD JUSTICE MOORE-BICK
- SIR STANLEY BURNTON
Areas of Law
- Immigration Law
- Administrative Law
2014
COURT OF APPEAL (CRIMINAL DIVISION)
United Kingdom
CORAM
AI Generated Summary
Foreign nationals who completed graduate-level courses in the UK and sought to extend their leave as Tier-1 (Post-study Work) migrants had their applications refused as they were submitted before formally obtaining their qualifications. The Upper Tribunal heard 22 such cases and rejected all arguments. The Court of Appeal upheld this decision, ruling that the pragmatic policy was no longer relevant post the scheme's withdrawal. The court also found no legitimate expectation for applications to be determined under the former policy. Applications must comply with the rules in force at the time of the variation.
Judgment
Lord Justice Moore-Bick :
These renewed applications for permission to appeal have been listed for hearing together because they all raise one or more of a number of common grounds. Most of them arise out of a much larger group of cases, 22 in all, which for that reason were heard together by the Upper Tribunal; a few were the subject of determinations by the Upper Tribunal in more conventional proceedings.
Background
Until 6 th April 2012 students who had completed further education courses in this country could apply for leave to remain for up to 2 years in order to enter employment as Tier-1 (Post-study Work) migrants. It was hoped that the scheme would attract high quality graduates to this country, but in March 2011 the government concluded that it had not succeeded in doing so and announced that it had decided in principle to close that particular route to entry from April the following year. In the event the new rules took effect from 6 th April 2012.
Under the Immigration Rules as they had been before 6 th April 2012 persons wishing to apply for entry as Tier-1 (Post-study Work) migrants were required to apply under the Points-Based System. The points that would be awarded in respect of different aspects of an application were set out in Table 10 of Appendix A to the Immigration Rules. 75 points were required to qualify for leave to remain, of which 20 points could be awarded for a qualifying degree or other award and 15 points for an application made within 12 months of obtaining the qualification in question. An applicant would need to be awarded points under both heads in order to obtain the full 75 points required for a successful application.
It was clear from Table 10 that a person could not make an effective application until he had been formally awarded the qualification on which it was based. Despite that, it had become common for applications to be made by students who had completed their courses before they had been formally awarded their degrees or other qualifications and it appears that at some stage there had been some doubt about how to deal with such applications. In July 2010 caseworkers were sent an instruction by email in which it was pointed out that applications should not be made before qualifications had been formally confirmed and that those whose leave to remain had expired before that date should make their applications from abroad. However, they were also advised that if, by the time they came to make a de