Tribunal decisions

The decision

GG (HC395 para 317 : Joint Sponsorship) Jamaica [2004] UKIAT 00095

IMMIGRATION APPEAL TRIBUNAL

Date of Hearing: 14th April 2004
Determination delivered orally at Hearing
Date Determination notified:
29 April 2004

Before:

Mr C M G Ockelton (Deputy President)
Mr J Perkins (Vice President)
Mr L V Waumsley (Vice President)

Between:

APPELLANT

and

Secretary of State for the Home Department
RESPONDENT

DETERMINATION AND REASONS

1. The Appellant is a citizen of Jamaica. She appeals, with permission, against the determination of an Adjudicator, Mr George Jamieson, sitting in Glasgow, dismissing her appeal against the decision of the Respondent on 10th January 2003 refusing her indefinite leave to remain in the United Kingdom as a dependant relative. She is represented today by Ms Butler, instructed by Makanda Bart & Company. We have, however, heard submissions only from Mr Deller, who appears on behalf of the Respondent Secretary of State.

2. The relevant Immigration Rules are those contained in paragraph 317 of HC 395 as amended in respect of sub-paragraph 4 by Cm 4851 effective from 2nd October 2000. The Adjudicator summarised them in his determination but we will set out the relevant parts of paragraph 317:

“The requirements to be met by a person seeking indefinite leave to enter or remain in the United Kingdom as the parent, grandparent or other dependant relative of the person present and settled in the United Kingdom are that the person:

(i) is related to a person present and settled in the United Kingdom in one of the following ways:

(f) the son, daughter, sister, brother, uncle or aunt over the age of 18, if living alone outside the United Kingdom in the most exceptional compassionate circumstances and mainly dependant financially on relatives settled in the United Kingdom.

(ii) is joining or accompanying a person who is present and settled in the United Kingdom or who is on the same occasion being admitted for settlement;

(iii) is financially wholly or mainly dependant on the relative present and settled in the United Kingdom; and

(iv) can and will be accommodated adequately together with any dependants without recourse to public funds in accommodation which the sponsor owns or occupies exclusively, and

(a) can and will be maintained adequately together with any dependants without recourse to public funds.

(vi) has no other close relatives in his own country to whom he could turn for financial support; [and

(vii) is not material to this appeal].”

3. The Adjudicator found that in substance all the requirements of the Rules could be met but identified the following problem, that the named sponsor was not herself able to provide accommodation. The appeal was dismissed therefore on this ground alone. The question for us is whether, in the circumstances of this case, it was right to restrict the ambit of the word ‘sponsor’ in the way that the Adjudicator did.

4. The word ‘sponsor’, as we have indicated, appears in sub-paragraph 4 of the relevant Rule. At the same time as that amendment was introduced into the Rules, a definition of ‘sponsor’ was also introduced in paragraph 6. That definition is as follows:

“’Sponsor’ means a person in relation to whom an applicant is seeking leave to enter or remain as their spouse, fiancé(e) or unmarried partner as the case may be under paragraphs 277-295.”

That definition is clearly inappropriate in the present Rule, both because of the context and because the Rule is in paragraph 317. It follows that the Rules are silent in terms of defining ‘sponsor’ for the purposes of dependants outside marriage or quasi-matrimonial relationships.

5. As Mr Deller has pointed out to us, there is a difficulty in reading paragraph 317(i)(f) with paragraph 317(iii). That difficulty arises from the use of the plural ‘relatives’ in the former and the single ‘relative’ in the latter. So far, therefore, there is no assistance to be gained from the Rules in deciding whether it is possible for the purposes of paragraph 317 in general and paragraph 317(i)(f) in particular for there to be more than one sponsor.

6. We turn now to the circumstances of this case and in particular the application that was made using the appropriate form called SET(F) Version 04/2002, which was submitted to the Respondent dated 22nd November 2001. A number of questions on that form and their answers are relevant to this appeal. After section 1, which asks questions about the applicant, question 2 asks the basis of the application. The box for an application as a dependant relative is ticked and there then follows the question:

“Tell us:
2.1 The full name of your sponsor (the relative(s) you are applying to stay with in the UK )
2.2 His/her relationship to you”

The first question has been answered “Phillipa Dennis” and the second question has been answered “niece”.

7. At section 4, there are questions entitled ‘Your Sponsor’s Home and His/Her Finances’. There is no specific indication there that there may be more than one other person who acts as the sponsor. But in answer to the question 4.5 “Will your sponsor be supporting you and all your dependants from his/her own money?” the following has been written “I have another sponsor that gives me money, Mrs P Dennis”. It will be noticed immediately that that is the same person who was named as the sponsor, but the sense of this answer may have been affected by the fact that in a previous question the applicant had answered “Vanessa Harvey” to the question “Who was responsible for your financial support before you came to the UK?”.

8. At section 6, the applicant is required to enclose various documentary evidence with the application. One of the documents required is described as follows “Passport(s) for your sponsor(s) in the UK” and the annotation has been written “Mrs Vanessa Harvey’s passport enclosed”.

9. Together with the application are two documents described as ‘Sponsorship Undertaking’. Each of those documents is headed indicating that its completion is not essential to the application, but they have both been completed. One has been completed by Vanessa Harvey, who gives her date of birth and undertakes to assume the burdens of the sponsor. The other is completed by Phillipa Marraine Dennis who gives her date of birth and makes the same undertaking. It is quite clear from those documents that those sponsors make the undertaking severally.

10. Turning now to the issue before us, the first question must be whether, in principle, there can be two sponsors. As Mr Deller frankly admitted, this is a matter on which even the Rule itself is unable to take a consistent line. We take the view that the terms of the application form (indicating, as they do, at the points which we have set out, the possibility of more than one person being the sponsor) concede that a sponsor can, in principle, consist of more than one person. That, indeed, is what we should have expected. It cannot be unusual for a dependant relative to seek to join a married couple. It is not unusual for sponsorship to be provided by a charity or by some other body which may not have legal personality and therefore may formally consist of more than one person.

11. The question then is how a joint sponsorship feeds into the requirements of the Rules. It seems to us that provided that all the individuals who together comprise a sponsor have severally undertaken the responsibilities of a sponsor, it is unlikely to matter very much where the support is found for accommodation and maintenance. Whether it would be possible for one individual to undertake accommodation and a different individual to undertake to provide maintenance is a question which does not arise in this appeal.

12. For the reasons we have given, however, it appears to us that in this case the sponsor was correctly to be taken, reading the form as a whole, as the two nieces jointly and severally. On the findings of the Adjudicator, that sponsor was sufficient to enable the Appellant to meet the requirements of paragraph 317 and it follows that the Adjudicator should have allowed the appeal.

13. We therefore allow the Appellant’s appeal and direct that she be granted the leave she sought.

C M G OCKELTON
DEPUTY PRESIDENT