Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER
Case No: UI-2024-005347

First-tier Tribunal No: EA/00971/2024

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:
On 30 August 2025

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE BLUNDELL
and
DEPUTY UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE BURGHER

Between

HAFEEZ AHMED KHAN TABASSUM
Appellant
and

ENTRY CLEARANCE OFFICER
Respondent

Representation:
For the Appellant: Mr Youssefian, instructed by Baya Immigration Legal Services
For the Respondent: Ms Nolan, Senior Presenting Officer (24 January 2025)
Ms Tariq, Senior Presenting Officer (20 June 2025)

Heard at Field House on 24 January and 20 June 2025

DECISION AND REASONS
1. The appellant is a Pakistani national who was born on 12 November 1954. He lives in Canada as a recognised refugee.
The Application for Entry Clearance
2. On 6 September 2022, the appellant sought entry clearance to the United Kingdom under Appendix EU (Family Permit). We will refer to this application as “the family permit application”. The appellant sought to join his daughter in the United Kingdom. She is Asma Hafeez, a Norwegian citizen who was born on 24 May 1981.
3. The family permit application was completed by the sponsor. She provided their details, including the appellant’s address in Calgary, in the online application form. She stated that she had been granted status under the EU Settlement Scheme. She stated that the appellant had been married to a Pakistani national called Ruqqia Begum since 1970, and that they were living together at that time. The sponsor declared that the appellant relied on her for financial support.
4. Various documents were provided in support of the application. There were documents related to the appellant’s identity and status in Canada and to the sponsor’s status in the UK. The sponsor’s birth certificate stated that she was related to the appellant as claimed. There were also some documents relating to the financial circumstances of the appellant’s family in the United Kingdom. There were payslips showing that the sponsor was earning £500 per month by working for her brother, Imran Hafeez. There were also copies of the sponsor’s Halifax bank statements for the period 1 January 2022 to 11 May 2022. The sponsor’s P60 for the year ending 5 April 2021 showed that she had earned 14,999.94 by working at a barber’s shop in West Sussex. Western Union remittance slips showed that the sponsor had remitted sums of money. There was also an affidavit from the appellant’s landlord which stated that his rent was paid by the sponsor.
5. The Entry Clearance Officer (“ECO”) refused the application on 6 September 2022. She considered there to be various difficulties with the evidence submitted in support of the application. The sponsor’s birth certificate was issued years after her birth and the family registration document was insufficient to confirm the relationship. She was not satisfied that the appellant was related to the sponsor as claimed, therefore. Nor was she satisfied that the appellant was dependent on the sponsor as claimed. She reached that conclusion because only a limited amount of evidence of support had been provided.
The Appeal to the First-tier Tribunal
6. The appellant appealed to the First-tier Tribunal on 27 April 2024. Once again, it was the sponsor who did so, on behalf of her father. She requested that the appeal be determined on the papers. At 1914 on 1 May 2024, the sponsor sent additional evidence in support of the appeal. Amongst the documents provided was a statement which provided further details of the appellant’s dependence on the sponsor, including her payment of his rent to his landlord in Canada, Mr Ashfaq. There were various additional items of evidence appended to this statement, including Mr Ashfaq’s bank statement and additional remittance slips from World Remit and Western Union, showing additional payments from the sponsor to the appellant in Canada. The sponsor’s P60 for the year ending 5 April 2024 showed that she had been employed by a company called Immy Taxis in West Sussex and had earned 14,400 in that tax year.
7. On 10 September 2024, the papers were placed before First-tier Tribunal Judge Fox. On 3 October 2024, his decision was promulgated. It suffices at this stage to mention that he stated at [5]-[6] of that decision that the respondent had provided a bundle of 104 pages and that the appellant had not filed any evidence in support of the appeal. The judge went on to dismiss the appeal for essentially the reasons given by the ECO in her notice of decision.
The Appeal to the Upper Tribunal
8. The appellant appealed to the Upper Tribunal against Judge Fox’s decision. The single ground of appeal was that the judge had failed to take any account of the additional evidence which had been provided to the tribunal by email on 1 May 2024. Judge Bagral considered that ground of appeal to be arguable and granted permission to appeal.
9. The appeal came before us on 24 January 2025, when Mr Youssefian represented the appellant and Ms Nolan represented the respondent. Ms Nolan accepted that the judge had erred in failing to have regard to the material which was sent to the tribunal on 1 May 2024. She accepted that the proper course was for the judge’s decision to be set aside as a whole and for the appeal to be determined afresh. We agreed with Ms Nolan. It is not clear to us why the evidence was not placed before the judge but it clearly was not, and his failure to have regard to it is an error of law which must result in his decision being set aside.
10. We noted that the sponsor was present at the hearing and that an Urdu interpreter was also in attendance and we canvassed the views of the parties concerning the disposal of the appeal. Mr Youssefian and Ms Nolan were both content for the decision on the appeal to be remade in the Upper Tribunal without further ado. Having considered the guidance in AEB v SSHD [2022] EWCA Civ1512; [2023] 4 WLR 12 and Begum (Remaking or remittal) [2023] UKUT 46 (IAC); [2023] Imm AR 558, we resolved to hear the appeal afresh on that day.
11. Mr Youssefian called the sponsor to give oral evidence and sought permission to ask questions which extended beyond the adoption of her witness statements. We gave him permission to ask those questions without demur from Ms Nolan. The sponsor revealed in her responses to Mr Youssefian’s questions that the appellant had been granted entry clearance to the United Kingdom as a visitor in May 2023, and that he had been in the United Kingdom between 31 May 2023 and 7 June 2023. She also stated that the appellant had seen family members including her mother, Ruqqia Begum, whilst he was in the United Kingdom.
12. There was no information relating to this visit in the papers before us. There was no mention of it in the sponsor’s written evidence. We were concerned that statements made during the course of the visit visa application might be relevant to the appellant’s dependency on the sponsor, which was the principal issue in the appeal. We therefore asked Ms Nolan whether she had digital access to the Visa Application Form which had been completed in support of the visit visa application. Ms Nolan did have access to that form, and was able to provide copies of it to us and to Mr Youssefian. On considering the contents of that application form, Mr Youssefian applied for an adjournment of the hearing so that instructions could be taken from the appellant. Ms Nolan was content for us to adjourn the hearing for that reason, and we did so.
The Resumed Hearing
13. There was then some difficulty in fixing a date for the resumed hearing and it was not until 20 June 2025 that the matter resumed before us, with Mr Youssefian once again representing the appellant and Ms Tariq representing the ECO. Ms Tariq confirmed that she was not prejudiced by the fact that she was not present at the earlier hearing; she had copies of Ms Nolan’s notes from that hearing and was ready to proceed.
14. The advocates confirmed that the composite bundle of 505 pages, which had been filed and served by the appellant’s representatives on 21 February 2025, contained all the evidence which we would need to consider.
15. The sponsor gave evidence before us. She did so through an Urdu interpreter. They confirmed before she gave evidence that they could converse freely and there were no difficulties with interpretation during the hearing.
16. Mr Youssefian asked the sponsor to adopt the statement she had made on 21 February 2025. He had no additional questions for her, beyond those which he had asked at the hearing in January. The sponsor was then cross-examined by Ms Tariq. We do not propose to rehearse her answers in this decision. We will refer to what she said insofar as it is necessary to explain our decision.
17. We should mention, however, that it was necessary for us to rise to discuss two issues at the conclusion of Ms Tariq’s cross-examination.
18. We were concerned, firstly, that although Ms Tariq had explored the contents of the sponsor’s statement with her, she had not squarely put her case. The visit visa application form stated that the appellant had a regular pension income of £9000 per annum. The sponsor stated in her most recent statement that she had made a mistake on the form, and that her answer to this question was actually a reference to her uncle’s pension. Mr Tariq’s case appeared to be that this was untrue, and that the appellant had a pension of £9000 per annum which the sponsor had failed to declare in his family permit application. She had not put to the sponsor in terms, however, that this was untrue.
19. We were concerned, secondly, that Ms Tariq had asked no questions concerning the source of the money which the sponsor had remitted to the appellant in Canada. The sponsor’s income is comparatively modest and her Halifax bank statements appeared to show consistent and regular payments from other family members, including the appellant’s wife. We considered that it was necessary to hear from the sponsor on this issue, which was obviously material to the principal issue in the case.
20. On returning to the hearing room, we alerted the advocates to our first concern. Ms Tariq confirmed that she did not accept that the sponsor was being truthful when she claimed that the reference to a pension of £9000 was to her uncle’s pension, and we invited her to put that to the sponsor so that she had an opportunity to address it. Ms Tariq then asked several additional questions of the sponsor. After six questions, Mr Youssefian protested that she had still failed to put the respondent’s case. We agreed with him, and invited Ms Tariq to put her case clearly to the sponsor. She did so, and the sponsor answered that her father had no pension; he would not have needed her uncle and her brother to sponsor him for the visit visa if he had a pension; and the bank statements from her uncle showed that he had a pension in that sum.
21. We then alerted the advocates to our second concern, and Ms Tariq asked supplementary questions of the sponsor concerning the payments into her account from her mother, which she answered. She stated that her mother was quite elderly and that she sometimes paid money to the sponsor for her shopping or travel. Ms Tariq’s questions then strayed into other areas, including payments which were made by the sponsor to her other family members, prompting a further observation from Mr Youssefian that the re-opened cross-examination was beyond the scope of the tribunal’s second concern. We agreed with that observation too, and did not permit Ms Tariq to ask yet further questions.
22. Mr Youssefian had no re-examination of the sponsor.
Submissions
23. Ms Tariq relied on the ECO’s decision and submitted that the appellant was not dependent on the sponsor. There were inconsistencies in the financial information. The respondent did not accept that the sponsor had given a truthful account of the reason that she had stated in the visit visa application that her father had a pension of £9000 per annum. There was nothing about the questions asked in that section of the form which might have prompted the sponsor to think that her uncle’s income should be volunteered.
24. The sponsor claimed that she had originally been unaware that the appellant had a bank account and a credit card but that was highly unlikely. There was also a lack of transparency in the sponsor’s account of the source of funds in her bank account. The sponsor’s evidence did not adequately explain the origin of funds and there was no witness statement from the appellant’s wife or from the sponsor’s uncle. The appeal should be dismissed as the appellant had not established that he was genuinely dependent on the sponsor for his essential living needs.
25. Mr Youssefian submitted that the real question was dependency, and that the relationship between the appellant and the sponsor had been accepted. He submitted with reference to the wording of the Immigration Rules that the relevant date at which dependency needed to be shown was the date of the application. (Ms Tariq accepted, on our enquiry, that this was indeed the focus.)
26. Mr Youssefian submitted that there were four questions which the tribunal should consider. Firstly, whether the appellant was in a position to meet his essential living needs. Secondly, whether money was being provided by the sponsor. Thirdly, whether the money transferred from the sponsor to the appellant was the sponsor’s money. Fourthly, whether that money was being used to meet the appellant’s essential living needs. Mr Youssefian accepted that all of these questions had to be answered affirmatively if the appellant was to succeed in his appeal.
27. Mr Youssefian submitted that the appellant was not in a position to meet his own essential living needs. His personal bank statements showed his income and expenditure and there was no source of income beyond that which came from the Province of Alberta, comprising the $359 income support and $100 winter fuel payment. The latter payment had ceased by the date of application and the former had been paused whilst the appellant was in Europe visiting his family. Mr Youssefian noted that there might have been an error as to the dates of travel in the appellant’s statement. (The sponsor interjected, in English, to say that she could check the stamps on the appellant’s visas if it would be of assistance.) Mr Youssefian helpfully showed us that the payments had resumed by 7 December 2023, as was clear from the appellant’s bank statement.
28. Mr Youssefian submitted that the $359 was obviously insufficient to cover the appellant’s essential living needs. His rent (including bills) was $300 per month and the remaining $59 was insufficient to cover other requirements for a month. The sponsor demonstrably paid the appellant’s rent. The other aspects of the appellant’s income and expenditure were provided by the credit card statements, the breakdown in the appellant’s statement, and the cash payments sent by the appellant’s daughter.
29. We asked Mr Youssefian about the way in which the appellant was able to pay off his credit card in full every month, as indicated by the “ABM payment” entries on his credit card statements. He submitted that there were three possibilities. Mr Youssefian accepted that the letters “ABM” were likely to refer to an Automated Banking Machine and that a deposit could be made into such a machine by cash, cheque or an instruction to transfer funds from another account. He noted that there was no suggestion of another bank account in this case. It was far more likely that the appellant deposited cash in order to pay the bill.
30. Mr Youssefian submitted that the “elephant in the room” was the sponsor’s reference, in the visit visa application form, to the appellant having a pension of £9000 per annum. A clear and straightforward explanation had been provided by the sponsor. She had made a mistake and had referred in that application form to her uncle’s pension. We asked Mr Youssefian whether the sponsor had been frank about other matters in the visit visa application form, noting that there was no reference in that form to the appellant’s wife living in the UK. He submitted that this was not relevant to the question of dependency.
31. Whilst Mr Youssefian accepted that the sponsor would have selected “pension” as an option in the visit visa application form, she had thought this was a reference to her uncle’s support. The appellant’s bank statements contained no reference to a pension and there was no indication of a hidden bank account. We observed that the appellant’s wife evidently had a bank account, since she paid money into the sponsor’s account, and that we did not have statements from that account. Mr Youssefian accepted that, but submitted that the remaining documents provided a clear indication of the appellant’s financial position. He evidently could not receive a pension from the Canadian government. The appellant’s brother’s tax return showed that he received UK pensions and state benefits of £8369 per annum in 2022/2023. The appellant was a retired farmer from Pakistan. Considering all the circumstances, it was more likely than not that the sponsor had referred to her uncle’s pension in the visit visa application form.
32. In the event that we accepted that the appellant was in a position of need, Mr Youssefian submitted that the other three questions fell to be answered in his favour. It was not disputed that money was being sent to him. The money which was being sent was clearly the sponsor’s. The affidavit from the landlord and the receipts for various items in Canada showed that the appellant used the money from the sponsor to meet his essential living needs. The appeal fell to be allowed.
Discussion and Conclusions
33. The appellant bears the burden of proof. The standard of proof is the ordinary civil standard.
34. The ECO doubted whether the appellant and the sponsor were related as claimed. That was no part of Ms Tariq’s case before us, and rightly so. Whilst the ECO was understandably concerned that the sponsor’s birth certificate was produced more than two decades after her birth, all of the other evidence in this case points firmly towards the relationship being as claimed. The family certificate from Pakistan’s National Database and Registration Authority is of particular significance, as is the fact that the appellant has visited his family in the United Kingdom and in Norway. It is quite plain that he is the sponsor’s father.
35. The issue between the parties is therefore whether the appellant is dependent upon the sponsor. The definition of dependency in Appendix EU (FP) has at all material times been as follows:
‘dependent’ means here that:
(a) having regard to their financial and social conditions, or health, the applicant cannot meet their essential living needs (in whole or in part) without the financial or other material support of the relevant EEA citizen (or, as the case may be, of the qualifying British citizen) or of their spouse or civil partner; and
(b) such support is being provided to the applicant by the relevant EEA citizen (or, as the case may be, by the qualifying British citizen) or by their spouse or civil partner; and
(c) there is no need to determine the reasons for that dependence or for the recourse to that support.
36. The advocates proceeded on the basis that the test in the Immigration Rules was, and was intended to be, identical to that which previously existed in Union Law, as examined by Elias LJ (with whom McCombe and Ryder LJJ agreed) at [9]-[26] of Lim v ECO (Manila) [2015] EWCA Civ 1383; [2016] Imm AR 421. Having analysed the decisions of the domestic courts and the CJEU, Elias LJ concluded that it was firstly necessary in such a case to determine whether the family member was in a position to support themselves: [18]. It was not enough “simply to show that financial support is in fact provided by the EU citizen to the family member”: [25]. The “reason why the party cannot support himself or herself is irrelevant; the fact that he or should cannot do so it critical”: [24]. Lim’s appeal to the Court of Appeal was unsuccessful, therefore, because she owned her own home in Manila and had substantial savings in a retirement plan, as a result of which she was in a position to support herself: [5] and [32].
37. It is for that reason that Mr Youssefian was entirely right to submit that the first question we should consider is whether, as he put it, the appellant is in a position of need. It is therefore to that question that we shall now turn.
38. It is common ground that the appellant currently receives only a small sum ($359 or £195) in monthly income support from the Government of Alberta. He has previously received an additional $100 payment, apparently akin to a winter fuel payment, but that stopped before the application was made.
39. There was previously some suggestion that the appellant might, as a recognised refugee, receive additional support from the national or regional government, but that was no part of Ms Tariq’s case. Nor could it have been, given the evidence at p133-146 of the consolidated bundle. That evidence shows that the appellant would not be eligible for a pension in Canada despite his age. There is nothing in that material, or any other evidence before us, to suggest that the appellant is eligible for any other form of support from the national or local government in Canada.
40. We accept Mr Youssefian’s submission that the $359 which the appellant receives every month is insufficient to provide for his essential needs. We accept that his rent is $300 per month. That is stated in various places, including the affidavit from the appellant’s landlord, and is supported by other documents in the bundle, including the bank statement of the landlord, showing a payment from the sponsor of $1800 for six months’ rent.
41. The real question, which Mr Youssefian aptly described as the “elephant in the room”, is whether the appellant has any other income. Having considered the evidence with care, we consider that the answer to that question is clear: the appellant has additional undisclosed income. We reach that conclusion for the following reasons.
42. We note, firstly, the reference to the appellant having a pension of £9000 in the visit visa application form. The questions asked and the answers given appeared in a section of the application form titled “Income and expenditure”. The first three questions and answers were as follows:
Do you have another income or savings?
Other regular additional income

What kind of regular additional income do you have?
Pension

Total amount of regular additional income that you get in a year
9000.00 GBP
43. It was the disclosure of this information, prompted by the sponsor’s oral evidence at the hearing in January, that led to the adjournment of that hearing. The appellant and the sponsor both made statements after that hearing, stating that the appellant has no pension and that the reference to a pension was to the pension of the appellant’s brother, Gulzar Ahmed, who was sponsoring the visit visa application.
44. We note that Gulzar Ahmed and the appellant’s son Imran Hafeez were the sponsors of the visit. There are references to both individuals throughout the application form. We also note that Gulzar Ahmed’s tax return for the year 2022-2023 reflects his receipt of £8,369 of UK pensions and state benefits, and that that sum accords with the DWP State Pension payments which enter his Lloyds Bank account towards the end of each month, in the sum of £711.16. To that extent, the sponsor’s suggestion that she made a mistake is consistent with the documentary evidence about her uncle’s financial circumstances.
45. We are unable to accept, however, that the sponsor made reference to her uncle’s pension when she answered the questions we have reproduced above. Those questions were clearly directed to the appellant’s personal income, and not to that of the sponsor(s). The sponsor claimed that it was a simple mistake but we do not accept that it was. It was the sponsor who made the family permit application for the appellant, and it was the sponsor who wrote the submissions which were made in support of the appeal to the First-tier Tribunal against the refusal of that application. Those documents were competently prepared and do not indicate any deficiencies in understanding English.
46. Two years have passed since the visit visa application was made and we take note of the fact that the sponsor opted to use an interpreter at the hearing before us. Despite that, she was able to follow the proceedings when they were conducted only in English; as we have noted at [27] above, there was a point during Mr Youssefian’s submissions (which were not translated) at which the sponsor interjected in English to offer to find dates of travel in the appellant’s passport.
47. There is no ambiguity in the questions asked in the visit visa application form. Each poses a question which is directed to the applicant: “Do you have another income or savings?”, for example. We note that other questions in the form are phrased the same way, providing a clear indication that it is the circumstances of the applicant which are being requested. “Will you be travelling to the UK as part of an organised group?”, for example.
48. In our judgment, the sponsor understood the three questions above to refer to the appellant’s income. The information she provided in response to those questions referred to the appellant’s income. We specifically reject the suggestion that she was confused and that she erroneously entered her uncle’s income in response to these questions.
49. Mr Youssefian submitted that it was inherently unlikely that the appellant would have a pension of £9000 per annum. He noted, correctly, that there was no reference to the appellant having any such income in the financial material which is before us. That submission is correct as far as it goes but the difficulty for the appellant is that we clearly have not been provided with a full account of his finances. There are two obvious gaps in the evidence.
50. The first, and most striking, is that we have not been provided with the appellant’s wife’s bank statements. We know that she has a bank account because she transfers money from that account into the sponsor’s account on a regular basis. In January 2023, for example, the sponsor’s mother transferred a total of £1650.97 into the sponsor’s bank account by way of five payments of sums ranging from £102 to £688. During the period covered by the bank statements which appear at pp326-339, the sponsor’s mother transferred a total of just under £4000 to the sponsor by way of various transfers of varying sizes. The sponsor’s Halifax bank statements indicate that each of these transfers was made by “FPI”. The key to the transaction types on the subsequent statement at p334 shows that this stands for “Faster Payment In”, denoting a transfer from another account. In a case in which we are asked to accept that the appellant is unable to meet his essential needs from his own resources, it is extraordinary that we have not been provided with his spouse’s bank statements.
51. In any event, we think it more likely than not that the appellant has another bank account in Canada. The existence of his Scotia Bank account and his credit card with that bank only became clear after legal representatives were instructed in the course of these proceedings; the sponsor had previously stated that he had no bank account in Canada. We do now have statements for those accounts, covering the period in question. It is apparent, as Mr Youssefian noted, that the only source of income into the Scotia Bank current account is the income support and winter fuel payments we have already described. The Scotia Bank credit card account begs a further question, however. It is clear that the appellant takes steps to clear the balance of that account every month, presumably with a view to avoiding any interest accruing. On 24 April 2023, for example, he cleared the balance of that account by making a payment of $663.36.
52. No corresponding payment appears in the Scotia bank account statements which we have before us. In fact, although we can see from the credit card statements that the balance of the account was consistently cleared, often by quite sizeable payments, there is no corresponding entry in any of the appellant’s current account statements. This led to us querying with Mr Youssefian whether there might be another account. Mr Youssefian submitted that the record in the credit card statements (“ABM Payment”) could indicate that a payment was made at an Automated Banking Machine by cash, cheque or bank transfer. We think he is probably correct in that analysis but it does not assist the appellant, for the following reasons.
53. It is inherently unlikely that the payments were made by cash into an Automated Banking Machine because some payments, including the one which was made in April 2023, were for sums which included Canadian cents. We think it highly unlikely that banking machines would accept coins. Even if we did not harbour that concern, however, the fact remains that the origin of these (often quite large) sums remains unclear. The appellant paid more than $600 in April 2023 and just under $1000 in November 2023. There are no corresponding cash withdrawals from his Scotia Bank current account, and there is no suggestion in the papers before us that he somehow stockpiles the cash which is transferred to him by the sponsor.
54. The sponsor was asked about this during cross-examination. Her evidence was that the appellant lives in a shared house and that he buys food for the whole house, the cost of which is then repaid to him by the other occupants, thereby enabling him to pay his credit card bills. The appellant gives no such account in his statement, however, and the suggestion is not supported by the receipts for foodstuffs which appear at pp99-112. The greatest expenditure in those receipts was at the Calgary Produce Market on 27 April 2024, for $82.62, which is under £45. There is no evidence in the bundle which suggests that the appellant has been buying in bulk for his shared house and being reimbursed for those purchases. We reject the sponsor’s evidence in that regard; in our judgment, it was a fabrication designed to explain away the absence of evidence about how the appellant was able to pay off his credit card bills every month.
55. It is therefore much more likely, in our judgment, that the balance of the credit card is cleared by cheque or, probably, by a bank transfer instruction given by the appellant at a Scotia Bank automated banking machine. Whether the funds are provided by cheque or by bank transfer, the fact is that we have not been provided with statements of the account from which those payments are made.
56. Mr Youssefian quite properly during his submissions drew attention to the fact that there is no reference to the appellant having a pension in any of the financial material before us. He asked rhetorically where the pension might be, if it was not apparent in the appellant’s Scotia Bank account. Based on our analysis above, we think that the answer to that question is that the appellant has undisclosed funds in another bank account which is either in his name or that of his spouse. That inference is irresistible, given the many sizable transfers made by the appellant’s wife to their daughter, and given the appellant’s ability to clear his credit card balance on a monthly basis using funds which are not identified in the papers before us.
57. Mr Youssefian also noted during his submissions that the appellant is a retired farmer and that it was unlikely that he would have (by Pakistani standards) such a sizeable pension. Whilst we accept that a pension of £9000 would be sizeable by Pakistani standards, we do not accept that it is inherently unlikely that the appellant would have such a pension. The appellant claimed in his statement of 20 February 2025 that his income as a farmer was insufficient to support him and that he had never received a pension from any source. We are not prepared to accept that evidence as truthful in circumstances in which the appellant’s wife evidently has funds in a bank account which has been withheld from us.
58. We therefore consider that it is more likely than not that the sponsor’s suggestion that her father has a pension of £9000 was accurate and truthful. We do not accept that she erroneously made reference to her uncle’s pension at this stage of the visit visa application form.
59. Given that the appellant’s monthly rent, including bills, is only £163 (on today’s exchange rate), and given that the appellant also receives $359 monthly from the Government of Alberta, we find that he is in a position to meet his essential living needs without any support from the sponsor. He is not, as Mr Youssefian put it, in a position of need. Combining the pension which we have found to be his and the income support from the government, he is more than able to meet his total monthly expenditure of $732 (£398), as given in his witness statement of 12 January 2025. That conclusion requires us to dismiss the appeal, although we do, for the sake of completeness, proceed to consider the remaining questions posed by Mr Youssefian.
60. Mr Youssefian’s second question was whether money was being provided to the appellant by the sponsor. It is common ground in this case, as it was in Lim v SSHD, that the sponsor has transferred money to the appellant in Canada. That is clear from the remittance slips from Western Union and World Remit. It is also clear from the rental payments which have been made to Naveed Ashfaq, the appellant’s landlord. His rent in Calgary is $300 per calendar month. Mr Ashfaq stated in his affidavit that this sum was paid by the sponsor. Mr Ashfaq’s bank statement, which now appears at p40 of the consolidated bundle, shows a payment from the sponsor into his account in the sum of $1800, representing six months’ rent.
61. The third question posed by Mr Youssefian was whether the money which is transferred from the sponsor to the appellant is the sponsor’s money. In answering that question, we find that the names on the remittance documents from Western Union and World Remit do not tell the whole story. Looking at those documents in isolation, it certainly appears that money has been remitted from the sponsor to the appellant since she came to the United Kingdom. There are remittance slips dating back to 2020, showing that she has transferred money to him from the United Kingdom to Canada and Pakistan, including one transfer when he returned to Pakistan (despite his refugee status) for a family wedding in 2023.
62. Examination of the sponsor’s bank statements reveals a rather different picture, however. We do not have bank statements which cover the entire period of the transfers but we do have some of her bank statements for 2023 and 2024. What those statements show is that there is some similarity between the amount of money which the sponsor receives from her mother and the amount which the sponsor transfers to her father. We have a complete set of the sponsor’s bank statements for the first six months of 2023 and we use that period to illustrate the point.
63. According to the documents at pp88-97 of the bundle, the sponsor transferred a total of £2029 to the appellant over that period, including the cost of British Airways flights. We add to that sum the payments the sponsor has made to the appellant’s landlord, Mr Ashfaq, of $300 (£163) per month for the appellant’s rent and bills. The total amount transferred for the appellant’s benefit would therefore be £2029 plus £979, which is £3008.
64. The sponsor’s Halifax bank statements for the same period, at pp327-338 of the bundle. During that period, her mother made numerous payments into her account, ranging from £10 on 2 May 2023 to £1000 on 27 February 2023. Those payments totalled £3504.61 between 9 January and 3 May 2023. We note also that it is possible on occasion to notice a broad correlation between payments made to the appellant by the sponsor and payments made to the sponsor by her mother. One example is particularly striking. On 19 January 2023, a payment of £855 was made to the appellant’s landlord, Mr Ashfaq, by money transfer from the sponsor’s bank account: pp325-326 refers. In the ten days preceding that payment, the sponsor’s mother made two transfers to her, of £160.97 and £688, amounting to £848.97.
65. When the sponsor was asked about these transfers in her oral evidence, she stated that her mother is quite elderly and that the sponsor did her shopping for her. She also stated that she bought larger items for her mother, such as airfares. She suggested that these regular payments from her mother represented repayment for such expenses. We reject that evidence. The payments made to the sponsor by her mother are regular and often run to hundreds of pounds. They clearly do not represent mere shopping expenses, and we have no account of the sponsor’s mother’s travel itinerary (beyond trips to Norway and Pakistan in 2023) which correlates with such expenditure.
66. In our judgment, therefore, the answer to Mr Youssefian’s third question is that the money which is transferred to the appellant by the sponsor is nothing more than the money which she receives from her mother. In the circumstances, the appellant falls at the first and third hurdles in the appeal. The difficulties with the evidence are such that we conclude that he has failed to discharge the burden upon him. We conclude that he is not dependent on the sponsor for his essential living needs. That issue having been resolved adversely to him, the appeal falls to be dismissed.
Notice of Decision
The decision of the First-tier Tribunal involved the making of an error of law. That decision is set aside. We substitute a decision dismissing the appellant’s appeal.

Mark Blundell

Judge of the Upper Tribunal
Immigration and Asylum Chamber

11 August 2025