Leave To Remain Granted On The Private Life Route

• Published date: 09 September 2022
• Subject Matter: Immigration, General Immigration
• Law Firm: Richmond Chambers Immigration Barristers
• Author: Ms Alexandra Pease and Alex Papasotiriou

In August 2022, Alexandra Pease and Alex Papasotiriou, working together with our team of legal associates, assisted a client who had been without leave since 2014, and who had been unsuccessful in regularising his stay, to secure 30 months/2.5 years leave to remain on the private life route, placing him on a 10-year route to settlement.

Background

In November 2021, our client, a 32 year old Bangladeshi citizen, made a private life application in order to remain in the UK, on the basis of his close family support network in the UK and the circumstances he faced on return. Our client entered the UK in August 2006 with valid entry clearance. He regularised his stay until 2013 at which point a further application was refused and an in-time appeal dismissed. This meant that his leave extended under section 3C came to an end in 2014. Subsequently, our client made many attempts to regularise his stay before he instructed us and we were able to assist. His attempts started with a voided student application and, by the time he approached us, he had made six unsuccessful applications for leave to remain based on his private and family life and one failed EEA residence card application.

A New Family and Private Life Application

We assisted our client to make a fresh application for leave to remain based on his family and private life in the UK and he was initially granted six months leave outside of the rules. This was the breakthrough we needed and this allowed us to make a further in-time application before the expiry of his leave, which was subsequently successful and resulted in a grant of leave for 30 months.

How We Helped Our Client

As can be seen from the above summary, at the point when our client approached us, he had an adverse immigration history. Upon analysing his file and previous applications, we identified a number of areas of argument we could develop. We worked to substantiate the arguments with detailed documentary and expert evidence, always considering the hurdle of paragraph 353 of the Immigration Rules.

We started...