Tribunal decisions

The decision

IN THE UPPER TRIBUNAL
IMMIGRATION AND ASYLUM CHAMBER Cases Nos: UI-2025-004040, (HU/63081/24)
UI-2025-004041, (HU/63085/24)
UI-2025-004042, (HU/63084/24)
UI-2025-004043, (HU/63087/24)
UI-2025-004044, (HU/63088/24)

THE IMMIGRATION ACTS

Decision & Reasons Issued:

1st August 2026

Before

UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE BRUCE
DEPUTY UPPER TRIBUNAL JUDGE NEILSON

Between

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR THE HOME DEPARTMENT
Appellant
and

MR MOHAMAD RABEE HASSAN
Ms SHAM HASSAN
ALI HASSAN
SEIF HASSAN
RAWDAH ABU QURA
(anonymity order not made)
Respondent

Representation:

For the Appellant: Ms Arif, Senior Home Office Presenting Officer
For the Respondents: Mr Aslam, Mukhtar & Co

Heard in Edinburgh on the 24th June 2026

DECISION AND REASONS

1. The Respondents are all members of the same family. They are respectively a father, mother and their three minor children. The father and children are all nationals of Syria. The mother is a national of Jordan. They seek permission to enter the United Kingdom for the purpose of family reunification with their Sponsor, Mrs Lamis Eid Konjak, who is the mother of the First Respondent. She is therefore the mother-in-law of the Second Appellant and the grandmother of the children. She has been recognised as a refugee in the United Kingdom.

2. On 6 July 2025 the First-tier Tribunal heard the Respondents’ linked appeals against the decision to refuse to grant them entry clearance. The Tribunal found that the Respondents were unable to meet the requirements of the Immigration Rules relating to refugee family reunion, but it allowed the appeals on the basis that the decision to refuse entry clearance was an unjustified interference with their Article 8 family life with their Sponsor.

3. The Secretary of State now has permission to appeal against that decision, granted on 1 September 2025 by First-tier Tribunal Karbani. The application for permission advanced five grounds. With respect to their author, the application is unnecessarily long and repetitive, and is in some respects is simply wrong. It is for instance contended that the First-tier Tribunal erred in failing to apply the “principles” in Kumari v. The Netherlands Application 440151/20. There are no “principles” in Kumari. It is a case that turns on its own facts, and adds nothing to the established jurisprudence of the Strasbourg court. That said, we do not have to deal with every point raised. That is because four months after the grounds were filed the Court of Appeal handed down the judgment in Secretary of State for the Home Department v IA and Ors [2025] EWCA Civ 1516, which was agreed by the parties before us to provide some focus to the Secretary of State’s case. Ms Arif agreed that in fact there were only two issues of contention in the appeal. First, did the First-tier Tribunal err in its approach to whether there was here a ‘family life’ for the purpose of Article 8. Second, if there was, whether the First-tier Tribunal gave sufficient weight to the public interest in its proportionality balancing exercise.

Ground (i): Family Life

4. The facts presented to the First-tier Tribunal were as follows. The First and Second Respondents were married in Syria in 2012. They lived in Syria with his parents – the Sponsor and her husband. In 2013 the First and Second Respondents left the country and moved to Jordan. Shortly thereafter the Sponsor and her husband followed them. The children were all born in Jordan. In 2016 the Sponsor, her husband and two other sons of theirs were all granted refugee status in the UK. The First Respondent’s sister was subsequently also granted refugee status. The Respondents assert that they receive financial support from the Sponsor in the UK. They have maintained a close relationship with her, and other family members in the UK, via daily telephone/video calls and messaging apps. She has also visited them in Jordan. They averred that the Sponsor’s mental health was being adversely affected by continued separation from the Respondents, and that this had been seriously exacerbated by the First Respondent being diagnosed with leukaemia in 2024.

5. The First-tier Tribunal did not accept all of the evidence offered by the Sponsor and her husband. In particular it found that she had sought to exaggerate the difficulties that she would face in visiting the family in Jordan. It was clear from the evidence that she had been able to visit them on multiple occasions. In respect of financial support the Tribunal noted the very limited evidence of remittances, spread over only a short period of time. Although it had been said that the First Respondent was unable to work in Jordan, and that the family had therefore been supported for many years by family in the UK, the evidence given at the hearing was inconsistent with that. The documentary evidence suggested that in fact remittances had been limited to a short period in late 2024 to early 2025. The Sponsor subsequently testified that her son had been financially independent until he had become unwell. The Tribunal further found some exaggeration in the Sponsor’s claim to speak to her son on a daily basis: the telephone bills did not support this contention. It nevertheless found:

27. As to the engagement of article 8 ECHR. I accept that given the cultural norms in Syria, it is likely that A1 remained in the family home after his marriage to A2. I also accept that the family of A1 subsequently fled Syria for Jordan in 2013. Although A1 and A2 left a few months before the sponsor I accept that there was no break in family life and that they continued living together in Jordan until the sponsor and the rest of A1’s family were relocated, as refugees, to the UK. Evidence of cohabitation is a strong indicator as to the existence of family life and in this respect I accept that there was real effective and committed emotional support between A1 and the sponsor during this period and so I accept that article 8 ECHR is engaged.

6. In her written grounds the Secretary of State contends that this reasoning is flawed for a failure to take relevant matters into account. In particular it is submitted that it was not enough to find that family life might have existed in Jordan when they were all living together back in 2013-2016. The Tribunal was also required to consider whether that family life had survived the family split that occurred when the Sponsor, her husband and other children moved to the UK. On the findings that it reached on financial support, emotional bonds and physical contact, the Tribunal could not, the Secretary of State submits, be so satisfied.

7. The Secretary of State further places reliance on the decision in IA and Ors to submit that had the First-tier Tribunal turned its mind to that matter, it would have inevitably found family life not to exist, given its own findings of fact that there was here minimal financial support and a limited degree of contact between Mrs Konjak, her son and his family. The test, correctly stated, is whether there are “additional elements of dependency involving more than the normal emotional ties”, and on the evidence here, there were not.

8. Mr Aslam accepted that IA presented him with some difficulty, but nevertheless submitted that this case could be distinguished on its facts. He submitted that the Court of Appeal in IA had omitted, in its survey of the caselaw, to consider the decision of the European Court of Human Rights in MA v Denmark (6697/18). Had they done so, Mr Aslam contended, they would have added to their inexhaustive list of matters to be considered whether the family in question had been split through choice or necessity. If it was the latter, that was a factor of some importance in determining the extent to which any family life might or might not exist today.

9. Although Mr Aslam’s submission on MA v Denmark was not developed before us, we think it uncontroversial to suggest that forced migration might be an important factual consideration. The difficulty he faces is that we are unable to understand how that helps him in this case. We do not accept, as he suggested, that the separation between the family in the UK and the family in Jordan was one of necessity. The mere fact that Mrs Konjak has been recognised as a refugee here does not prove that to be so. We have no evidence at all about whether it was necessary for her to leave Jordan. On the face of it, that appeared to have been a choice on the part of those who migrated to the UK. The Respondents likewise exercised a choice to remain behind in Jordan.

10. Nor are we satisfied that Mr Aslam’s submission remedies the defect identified in the grounds, namely the Tribunal’s failure to make any finding about what had happened to this family life, if indeed it had existed pre-2016, since the Sponsor and other family members came to the UK. That was clearly a question that needed to be resolved, and we are satisfied that the decision of the First-tier Tribunal fails to address it.

11. Looking at that question ourselves through the prism of IA and Others, we regret to say that we find the facts to fall well short of establishing any current family life. The First-tier Tribunal rejected much of the evidence as exaggeration, and there were obvious contradictions in the Sponsor’s testimony about the extent to which her son and his family had ever turned to her for financial support. We do not doubt that Mrs Konjak deeply loves her son and his family, or that his cancer diagnosis is a source of great distress to her. They did all used to live together and we are prepared to accept that but for the war in Syria, they might all be living together still. Those facts are not however on their own sufficient to establish that there are today “additional elements of dependency involving more than the normal emotional ties” with the First and Second Respondents. The First Respondent has lived independently of his parents for a very long time. He has been receiving treatment for his condition in Jordan. He, his wife and children have now been living there for some 13 years. They obviously share a family life with each other, and have enjoyed visits from the Sponsor. Whilst she may have sporadically sent them funds, and they remain in contact, we are not satisfied that any of that is sufficient to meet the demanding test as it is articulated in IA.

12. We have further considered whether the evidence establishes that there is for the purpose of the Convention an Article 8 life shared between the Sponsor and her grandchildren. Again, we do not doubt that she holds them in extreme affection, and they her. Looking at the circumstances of the family as a whole, we are not however satisfied that this is sufficient to found an Article 8 claim. The children have not lived with their grandmother for some ten years, and they know her today only through ‘modern means of communication’ and visits. They live with, and are cared for, by their parents. On those facts, the Convention is not engaged.

Ground 2: Proportionality

13. It follows that we need not address in any detail the remaining points made by the Secretary of State about the approach taken by the First-tier Tribunal to the proportionality balancing exercise.

14. We can indicate that we remain to be satisfied that the Tribunal erred in its understanding of where the focus should lie. In IA the Court endorses the long-held notion that family nature is by its nature unitary, but emphasised that the “main focus” for enquiry should be the interference with the family life of the UK-based Sponsor. We note from paragraph 34 of its decision that the Tribunal does just that. It there notes that Mrs Konjak has been diagnosed with PTSD and depression and that family life was “one of the few things that brought her joy”.

15. Condensing the grounds in light of IA, there are nevertheless two criticisms made of the First-tier Tribunal decision that we find to be made out.

16. The first concerns its own finding that Mrs Konjak could continue to visit the Respondents in Jordan, as she has done before. Although it recognised those visits for the purpose of determining whether family life still exists, we accept in light of what is said in IA [for instance at its paragraph 151] that the First-tier Tribunal did not then consider their relevance in the context of the proportionality balancing exercise. If, contrary to our findings, family life did exist here, it had continued in this way for some 10 years. Preserving that status quo was an option which should have received specific attention.

17. Second, we are satisfied that there was here insufficient recognition of the strength of the public interest in circumstances where there is no provision under the Rules for entry clearance in these circumstances: paragraph 37 is not, in our view, a sufficiently robust exploration of the issues here.

Decisions

18. The decision of the First-tier Tribunal is set aside.

19. The decision in the appeal is remade as follows: the appeal is dismissed on human rights grounds.

20. There is no order for anonymity.

Upper Tribunal Judge Bruce
Immigration and Asylum Chamber
5th July 2026