Entry with EEA residence card in Surinder Singh cases

The request was partially successful.

Dear Home Office,

Please could you provide any documents, whether paper or electronic, showing your border policy for admission of non-EEA family members of British citizens with a non-UK residence card obtained under Article 10 of Directive 2004/38/EC.

This is because I want to know whether the UK will accept for entry Article 10 residence cards of family members of British citizens without requiring them to satisfy Regulation 9 of the Immigration (EEA) Regulations before entry. In light of CJEU Mcarthy (Case C-202/13), I believe the UK are obliged to accept for visa-free entry all Article 10 residence cards issued by other Member States without further entrance requirements needing to be satisfied.

Yours faithfully,

Jade

FOI Requests, Home Office

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FOI Requests, Home Office

Jade Beade
 
Thank you for contacting the Home Office with your request.
 
This has been assigned to a caseworker (new case ref 35359 ) who will
respond to you in due course.
 
If you have any questions then please do not hesitate to contact us.
 
Thank you
 
FOI Requests
Home Office
 
 
 
 

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FOI Requests, Home Office

Jade Beade

Thank you for contacting the Home Office with your request.

This has been assigned to a caseworker (new case ref 35455) who will respond to you in due course.

If you have any questions then please do not hesitate to contact us.

Thank you

FOI Requests
Home Office

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FOI Responses, Home Office

1 Attachment

Dear Ms Beade,

 

Please see the attached letter concerning your Freedom of Information
request 35455.

 

 

Yours sincerely

 

L. Picton

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FOI Requests, Home Office

1 Attachment

Dear Jade Beade,

 

Please find attached an interim response to your request.

 

Kind Regards

 

M Seedansingh

 

Information Rights Team

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Jade Beade left an annotation ()

In that case, please redact the relevant document(s) to leave out the parts that you consider may conflict with public interest.

I only want answered my question of whether the UK will accept for entry Article 10 residence cards of family members of British citizens (issued by other EEA states) without requiring them to satisfy Regulation 9 of the Immigration(EEA) Regulations before entry, so I will be content with redacted documents that will answer solely that question, or alternatively you could read the border policy yourself if you do not wish to release it to me and answer a simple yes or no to my question. My question again is, will the UK accept for entry Article 10 residence cards of family members of British citizens (issued by other EEA states) without requiring them to satisfy Regulation 9 of the Immigration(EEA) Regulations before entry?

Dear FOI Requests,

In that case, please redact the relevant document(s) to leave out the parts that you consider may conflict with public interest.

I only want answered my question of whether the UK will accept for entry Article 10 residence cards of family members of British citizens (issued by other EEA states) without requiring them to satisfy Regulation 9 of the Immigration(EEA) Regulations before entry, so I will be content with redacted documents that will answer solely that question, or alternatively you could read the border policy yourself if you do not wish to release it to me and answer a simple yes or no to my question. My question again is, will the UK accept for entry Article 10 residence cards of family members of British citizens (issued by other EEA states) without requiring them to satisfy Regulation 9 of the Immigration(EEA) Regulations before entry?

Yours sincerely,

Jade Beade

FOI Requests, Home Office

Thank you for contacting the Home Office FOI Requests mailbox.

The Freedom of Information (FoI) Act 2000 provides public access to
recorded information held by the department.

If you have submitted a valid FoI request, we will acknowledge your
request within 48 hours, and aim to provide the information requested
within 20 working days as specified under the FoI Act

PLEASE NOTE

If you have a general immigration enquiry, or require an update on a
specific case, you should contact UKVI directly, contact information can
be found here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/organisati... and
[1]https://www.gov.uk/visas-immigration

General enquiries should be directed to
[2][email address]  

 

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Communications via the GSi may be automatically logged, monitored and/or
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References

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1. https://www.gov.uk/visas-immigration
2. mailto:[email address]

Lola berwoots left an annotation ()

It is also important to obtain the reasons behind a 'yes' or a 'no' answer. If a 'yes', then clearly the reason behind is simple UK's Home Office obeying EU treaties. They know that if they give a 'no' answer, they would be 'officially' in breach of EU regulations, which could bring a bag of unexpected negative consequences to the UK Government. Nevertheless, they are somehow in breach of EU regulations already since Home Office, whilst not stating directly that they deny rights to particular groups of people, their new EEA(FM) application form only consider individual sponsors who are Workers or Self-employed! The form doesn't consider British applicants who were/are pensioners, students or in possession of enough financial resources to sustain themselves and their families. All of them can of course exercise their treaty rights of freedom of movement, according to EU regulations, but currently don't have a way to apply via EEA(FM). Outrageous to say the least.

Dear Home Office,

Please pass this on to the person who conducts Freedom of Information reviews.

I am writing to request an internal review of Home Office's handling of my FOI request 'Entry with EEA residence card in Surinder Singh cases'.

You have far exceeded the legal time limit for my FOI request. In your email of 8 June 2015 (which should have been the due date for responding to my FOI request of 8 May 2015) you said you needed more time to deal with my FOI request and gave 6 July 2015 as the due date that you would respond by. It's 6 July and you still have not responded.

Like I said previously to you in my email of 8 June 2015, which you did not reply to, please redact the document(s) I requested, to leave out the parts that you consider may conflict with public interest. I only want answered my question of whether the UK will accept for entry Article 10 residence cards of family members of British citizens (issued by other EEA states) without requiring them to satisfy Regulation 9 of the Immigration(EEA) Regulations before entry, so I will be content with redacted documents that will answer solely that question, or alternatively you could read the border policy yourself if you do not wish to release it to me and answer a simple yes or no to my question. My question again is, will the UK accept for entry Article 10 residence cards of family members of British citizens (issued by other EEA states) without requiring them to satisfy Regulation 9 of the Immigration(EEA) Regulations before entry?

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/e...

Yours faithfully,

Jade Beade

Dear FOI Requests,

I wrote to you on 6th July to request an internal review of the Home Office's handling of my FOI request "Entry with EEA residence card in Surinder Singh cases" because you had far exceeded the legal time limit for responding to my FOI request of 8th May. However, you have still not responded to my request for a review. Please respond by 8th August. If not I will be pursuing this further with the Information Commissioner's Office. This is not the correct way for an authority that is supposed to be accountable to its public to behave, almost as if they are trying to hide something because it might make them look bad.

My FOI request was reasonable, and I would even be happy for you to redact the relevant documents to leave out sensititve parts but however answered my question of whether EEA residence cards from other EEA countries would be accepted for UK entry without Regulation 9 of the EEA Regulations having to be met in the case where the EU sponsor is British. Or just simply answer yes or no if you cannot release the documents in any form to me.

A full history of my FOI request and all correspondence is available on the Internet at this address: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/e...

Yours sincerely,

Jade Beade

FOI Requests, Home Office

1 Attachment

Please see attached the response to your Time Complaint.

 

P. Zebedee

Knowledge and Information Management Unit

Performance and Risk Directorate

Home Office | 4^th Floor | Peel | 2 Marsham Street |  London SW1P 4DF

[1]www.gov.uk/home-office

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FOI Responses, Home Office

2 Attachments

Dear Ms Beade,

 

Please see the attached response to your Freedom of Information request
35455, with corresponding information, titled “EEA nations and their
dependants”.

 

 

Yours sincerely

 

L. Picton

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Lola berwoots left an annotation ()

L. Picton, thank you for your answer. I think border control should review and revise item 7.5 of their 'Border Force Operations Manual' (it would be appropriate to have a date on this manual as well), which requests a stamp to be placed in the passport of the non-EEA family member. This is in breach of regulation 11.(3) of The Immigration (EEA) Regulations 2006 (The Regulations), which clearly instruct Immigration Officers NOT to place a stamp on passports of non-EEA family members in possession of a residence card issued by a qualified EEA state, e.g. Article 10 residence card.

Essentially The Regulations do not confer the right to Immigration Officers to limit the amount of time non-EEA family members are admitted to the UK accompanying or joining their British spouse, when they have been admitted under article 9 of The Regulations. In this case, because British citizens do not need to remain qualified EEA nationals, they automatically fulfill regulation 13 and 14 of The Regulations, therefore no time restriction should be imposed on entry. Let's remember ECJ judgment in Eind (C-291/05).

I would agree that a stamp may be useful in order for the family members to exercise basic rights such as banking, NHS, NIN, work until they are issued with a UK residence card; In practice organisations and people don't really understand the rights conferred by a non-UK article 10 residence card if shown to them (especially when issued in foreign languages and without immediate means to validate the card), but they do understand and accept what a stamp on a passport means without questioning, saying 'Admitted To The United Kingdom Under the Immigration Regulations 2006", and can take fair decisions on this basis. However, a stamp with a time limit (as is current practice) can be prejudicial, and influence organisations and people's decisions against the non-EEA family member when it should not be the case at all.