Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER
Case No: UI-2024-001059
UI-2024-001060

First-tier Tribunal No: EA/08723/2022
EA/08721/2022

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:

7th April 2025

Before

DEPUTY UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE COTTON

Between

SAYED RAHMAN TARAKHIL
MOHMODAH TARAKHIL
(NO ANONYMITY ORDER MADE)
Appellant
and

SECRETARY OF STATE
FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Unrepresented
For the Respondent: Mr K Ojo, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer

Heard at Field House on 19 March 2025

DECISION AND REASONS
1. The appellants appeal with the permission of the Upper Tribunal against the decision of First- tier Tribunal (FtT) Judge Devlin (the Judge) promulgated 13 February 2023. The appellants had applied to the respondent for leave to enter the UK as dependent parents of a relevant EEA citizen, Salahuddin Tarakhil (the sponsor), who is a Belgian national. The respondent refused their applications on 22 August 2022.
2. The Judge was required to address the issue of whether the appellants were dependent on the sponsor at the date of their application. The Judge considered the evidence, including evidence that the sponsor send money transfers to the appellants. The Judge found it ‘difficult to understand’ why money was sent to stations remote from the appellants. The appellant state that this concerned the primary evidence on dependency and the Judge’s concerns about the evidence on this basis was not put to the sponsor in cross examination or otherwise raised.
3. In assessing dependence, say the appellants, the Judge came to an irrational conclusion on the appellants’ dependency on the sponsor. This was because, say the appellants, the Judge applied the test of whether the appellants were wholly dependent on the sponsor, rather than looking to see if they have proved they are dependent on the sponsor for part of their essential living needs.
4. Permission was given on those two grounds, and so the errors of law that I have to assess are:
a. Ground 1: Failure to put an adverse point to the sponsor;
b. Ground 2: Irrational conclusion as to the appellants’ dependency on the sponsor – that the judge set the bar higher than being partially dependent on the sponsor for their essential living needs.
Analysis and decision
5. In relation to the first ground, the judge outlines and analyses what they identify as difficulties with the evidence on money transfers at [130]. The Judge details a number difficulties with the evidence of transfers. The concerns range from a facsimile signature on a letter, through almost half of the money transfer receipts being relied on being produced twice in evidence, to the transfers beings sent to stations distant from where the appellants’ evidence placed them in Afghanistan
6. The appellants assert that the Judge did not put this to the sponsor in cross examination or otherwise raise it in the FtT. The appellants, legally represented until at least the point where their appeal grounds were settled (the point a transcript of the FtT proceedings should have been obtained if required) have not provided evidence of this being the case. The respondent accepts that there is no evidence that the Judge did specifically raise this as an issue. Given the position of the parties, I feel obliged to work on the basis that the Judge did not raise this point in the FtT for the appellants to address.
7. Comparing the appellants’ grounds of appeal against the FtT determination, I take the view that the appellants have overstated the importance of the Judge’s comments about the transfers being sent to stations distant from the appellants. The Judge does weigh this point negatively against the appellants, but this is little more than a passing observation amongst a sea of discrepancies, unsatisfactory explanations, negative inferences against the sponsor unchallenged on appeal, explanations for mistakes which lack credibility, and contradictory, vague and unclear evidence on behalf of the appellants.
8. Importantly, in my analysis, the Judge goes on to state at [135] that “I would have reached precisely the same conclusion even had I taken the evidence of money transfers at its highest. The negative pull is simply much too strong”. This takes me to the inescapable conclusion that, had the Judge approached the appellant’s evidence on the money transfers without taking the approach that is captured in the first ground of appeal, the Judge would still have come to the conclusion that the appellants had not proved their situation in Afghanistan was as claimed. The Judge would have come to the same conclusion that the appellants were not dependent on the sponsor.
9. Ground 1 is, in my judgment, like complaining that the Judge should have offered the appellants the opportunity to plug a single hole in the colander they were sitting in and sinking in. I find no material error of law.
10. With regards to the second ground, the Judge sets out at [43] the relevant test for dependency, namely that ‘dependent’ means that, having regard to their financial and social conditions or health, the applicant (ie the sponsors) cannot meet their essential living needs (in whole or in part) without the support of the sponsor.
11. The Judge correctly identifies at [34-36] that the burden of proof falls on the appellants and that they must discharge this on the balance of probabilities.
12. The appellants plead in their ground of appeal that the Judge dedicated much of the decision to making various adverse credibility findings against the sponsor and appellants, that this served as a distraction and that there was sufficient evidence for the Judge to conclude that the appellants were in part dependent on the sponsor.
13. The Judge does, it is fair to say, spend some time assessing what weight they could ascribe to the various pieces of evidence in this case. The Judge is careful, in my assessment, to consider the evidence both individually and in the round. There is analysis of the oral and written witness evidence, the documentary evidence and the country evidence. That analysis does not go the appellants’ way overall. But the Judge gives a reasoned and rational decision, and there is no basis on which to say that the Judge was not applying the correct test under the Immigration Rules and the correct burden and standard of proof. The Judge was entitled to come to the conclusion they did in my assessment, this second ground of appeal amounts to nothing more than a disagreement with the conclusion that he Judge came to. The Judge did not materially err in relation to the second ground.
Notice of Decision
The appeal is dismissed.
I do not set aside the decision of the First-tier Tribunal.

D Cotton

Deputy Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

1 April 2025