Pakistani student wins right to enter UK for studies

LONDON: A Pakistani student has won right to enter the United Kingdom after a judge ruled in his favour and against Britain’s High Commission in Islamabad during an administrative review.
Adnan Mushtaq, a 26 years old Pakistani student, had applied for entry clearance as a Tier-4 student on April 01, 2014 but his application was refused by the entry clearance officer (ECO) on April 11, 2014 considering him not a genuine student.
Manchester-based immigration lawyer Amjad Malik acted on behalf of the student and lodged an application for permission to seek judicial review challenging the ECO decision to refuse entry clearance. Initially leave was refused on September 22, 2014 by His Honour Judge Stephen Davies sitting as an Upper Tribunal Judge in Manchester but later upon an oral hearing permission was granted to take the challenge against visa refusal by the Honourable Justice McCloskey on January 08, 2015 and later upon hearing the full case on March 18, gave a historic judgement which will affect thousands of future applications by international students.
The Honourable Justice McCloskey remarked that the ECO had used “ambiguous words and phrases” while making the decision which could have been “avoided”.He added whilst dismissing the visa officer’s refusal decision of April 11, 2014: “Fairness will often require that the interviewer invite the subject to clarify or expand an answer or probe a response. These simple mechanisms will also illuminate the court’s assessment of whether any ensuing adverse decision was preordained. The nationals of impoverished and deprived countries who have invested large sums of money and whose admission to the United Kingdom is lawful if they satisfy the requirements of the relevant legal rules are deserving of no less.”
The judge made an order quashing the impugned decision of the ECO and awarded costs to the student and refused to Home Office/High Commission to appeal his decision in the Court of Appeal.
Barrister Amjad Malik said that this decision will have far reaching implications on decision making process of visa officers to adopt procedural fairness. “There are 500,000 international students contributing £14 billion to national economy and international students hailing from impoverished and deprived countries and those students who have not visited UK before and have invested large sums of monies on their education aspirations deserve equal treatment. Those students whose admission to the United Kingdom is lawful and if they satisfy the requirements of the relevant immigration rules deserve no less but a fair process in decision making,” he said.