Tribunal decisions

The decision

Upper Tribunal
(Immigration and Asylum Chamber) Appeal Number: PA/02590/2015

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Heard at Field House
Decision and Reasons promulgated
on 5 October 2016
on 6 October 2016

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE MACLEMAN

Between

[E T]
(ANONYMITY DIRECTION NOT MADE)
Appellant
and

THE SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

For the Appellant: Ms K Jurkun, of Duncan Lewis, Solicitors
For the Respondent: Ms J Isherwood, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer

DETERMINATION AND REASONS
1. The appellant appeals against a decision by First-tier Tribunal Judge Howard, promulgated on 18 May 2016, dismissing his appeal against refusal of recognition as a refugee from Eritrea.
2. The grounds of appeal to the UT are directed against paragraph 21 of the FtT decision, where the judge found that as the appellant said he was born in Assab, then an Ethiopian city, of Ethiopian parents, he was in Ethiopian law a national by descent. The grounds say:
[The judge] failed to take into account the actual position of the appellant's parents due to the separation of Eritrea from Ethiopia ? the separation of both countries raised several intricate points of nationality law ? not engaged with by the judge [who] oversimplified a matter that is rather complex.
The article by Jennifer Riggan ? in the appellant's bundle dealt with some of the intricacies ?. This was not referred to in the judgment. It would appear the judge did not engage fully with the objective evidence available to [him].
3. Ms Jurkun submitted further to the grounds that the appellant's parents considered themselves Eritrean, and therefore were Eritrean, and that the judge's failure to consider the article before him was an error such that the case should be remitted to a different judge of the FtT. She placed before me further printouts of information about Ethiopian nationality, but she did not suggest that these were relevant to whether the judge made any error on the case before him.
4. Ms Isherwood submitted thus. The documents produced today were irrelevant. The grounds overlooked that the appellant failed to establish any of his assertions on contested matters. There was no challenge to the judge's detailed reasoning or to his overall adverse conclusion. That included rejection of the appellant's account of his attempt to obtain confirmation from the Ethiopian Embassy that he would not be regarded as a citizen. The decision was brief but legally sufficient.
5. Ms Jurkun submitted in reply that although the further evidence now available was not before the judge, the article by Jennifer Riggan was, and had the judge looked at it properly, he would have referred to it. The appellant explained in his witness statement how he had taken all reasonable steps in relation to the Ethiopian Embassy. It was known that the Embassy did not issue written responses.
6. I reserved my decision.
7. The appellant has had legal representation throughout. If an appellant says that the law of another country does not recognise him as a national, that is a matter for him to establish. If the position is complex, then so much the greater the obligation on him to state his case clearly. It is of no use to say that there is an issue with which a judge did not engage, without specifying any basis on which the judge was invited to resolve it in the appellant's favour, or even any discernible basis on which the judge might have found for himself an argument for the appellant.
8. The notion that there may have been an oversight requiring remit to the FtT is misconceived. If the materials before the FtT about Ethiopia's recognition or non-recognition of nationals established the case, a decision should simply be substituted in the appellant's favour. The grounds and submission identified nothing in the article which must have led to another outcome (and now having read it, I see nothing in it to that effect).
9. The judge found against the appellant for reasons which have not been shown to be less than legally adequate.
10. The determination of the First-tier Tribunal shall stand.
11. No anonymity direction has been requested or made.

6 October 2016
Upper Tribunal Judge Macleman