Here’s yet another lunatic asylum case to make your blood boil. A Taliban commander’s nephew given refugee status in Britain can now be joined by seven – yes seven – family members, an immigration judge has ruled.
That’s despite Judge Gaenor Bruce acknowledging that they would place ‘a significant burden on the public purse’.
None of the relatives speak English and are all currently living in Turkey. It’s a case which brings together another outrageous interpretation of Surkeir’s beloved European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and our current obsession with Mental Elf.
I was going to say ‘extraordinary’ case, although these days rulings like this are practically par for the course.
But let’s start at the beginning, with the shorthand version.
The refugee at the centre of all this – referred to only as ‘S’ – arrived in the UK in 2016. Who knows how he got here. Back of a lorry, probably, since the Border Force cross-Channel ferry service for rubber dinghy migrants wasn’t operating back then.
The Taliban were overthrown as rulers of Afghanistan by the Americans in 2001 before sweeping back to power 20 years later
He said he had fled Afghanistan because his Uncle, some big-shot in the Taliban, was pressuring his dad to force S to ‘join the jihad’. With the war still raging, he didn’t fancy his chances so had it away on his toes.
When he shipped up in Britain he claimed to be 15, although he was ‘age-assessed’ at 18. Lying about his age should have been instant grounds for deportation, but we let him stay anyway.
In 2018 he was granted Indefinite Leave To Remain, after a psychotherapist said he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. He wanted to train as an electrician but was unable to do so because of his Mental Elf ishoos.
Oh dear, how sad, never mind.
Meanwhile, back in Afghanistan, his father was ‘facing retribution’ from Uncle Taliban and so the extended family – parents, three sisters, a niece and nephew – decamped to Turkey, via Iran.
The parents are housebound. Both have diabetes and the father is said to suffer from ‘undiagnosed seizures’. (If they’re undiagnosed, how does anyone know?) Two of the sisters were working illegally, washing dishes to support the rest of the family. One of them married an Afghan man she met in Turkey, but they split up after he hit her with an iron bar.
So in 2023 they decided to reunite with their runaway son in Britain, applying for entry under the right to a ‘family life’ clause in the ECHR. Incredibly, they were turned down.
Naturally, they found themselves a lawyer in the UK and appealed. Upper Tribunal Judge Bruce decided that the refusal decision had been ‘unjustifiably harsh’ and granted the appeal on yuman rites grounds.
Glorious Gaenor said that S’s Mental Elf was at the heart of the claim. ‘Only by being reunited with them will he be able to recover and live a meaningful existence.’
She acknowledged that he was ‘reliant on public funds’ and said it was ‘inevitable that this too would be the position of his family members once they arrive’.
In addition, she said it was unlikely ‘the family would be able to look to any other European country to facilitate family reunion’.
Why not? Doesn’t the ECHR apply in other European countries, only in the UK?
Well, yes it does, but none appears to interpret it so liberally as judges in Soft Touch Britain, with our thriving, taxpayer-funded yuman rites legal industry, which is reflected in the fact that Judge Bruce went out of her way to commend the family’s ‘conspicuously well-prepared’ brief.
I’m assuming they got legal aid, since the judge herself said they were potless and would have to live off the State when they arrived.
Nor am I suggesting that Judge Bruce ruled in anything other than an impeccably impartial manner.
She is a pillar of the legal community, with a Masters Degree in Islamic Law from the School of Oriental and African Studies at London University, and a BA Hons in Islamic Studies and Middle Eastern Politics from Exeter University.
However, given that the Government announced recently that it was temporarily suspending new applications allowing refugees to bring their family members to the UK, the Home Office is appealing her ruling.
But I wouldn’t hold your breath, since it would involve leaving the ECHR. Even if Surkeir wanted to (which he doesn’t), his unelected, far-Left Attorney General ‘Lord’ Hermer wouldn’t let him.
There would be uproar in the yuman rites industry, the BBC, the Lib Dems, the Labour Party and half the Tory Party, come to that. The courts would kill it stone dead.
So we can expect the Magnificent Seven Afghan family to be reunited with their runaway son in the not too distant. No doubt once they arrive here there’ll be a £600 taxi ticking over at the airport to fast-track the father to the top of the NHS waiting list so that his ‘undiagnosed seizures’ can be treated without further delay.
When he comes out of hospital, he and his wife can be housebound together in a council house, where the family can live happily ever after, courtesy of the mug British taxpayer. Perhaps the sisters can get a job washing dishes once their digital IDs come through.
Forgive me if I sound cynical, but someone’s got to do it. Labour may be making a few noises about getting tough on immigration and asylum abuses this week but, trust me, they don’t really mean it.
They’ve already dismissed Nigel Farage’s plan to get rid of Indefinite Leave To Remain – which is at the root of this particular case – as ‘racist’.
But until Britain leaves the pernicious ECHR, and reins in the Left-wing legal establishment, this madness will continue and Reform UK will rise and rise in the polls.
It may seem unfair to single out one family who admittedly have fled a pretty miserable existence in Afghanistan. But how many countries have they travelled through to get here? And why can’t they be reunited in Turkey, or Germany, or France, or one of the other signatories to the sacred European yuman rites act?
We’ve done our bit already.
In case anyone hasn’t noticed, this country is virtually insolvent.
We can’t go on taking in all the world’s waifs and strays and putting them up at taxpayers’ expense, just so that Left-wing politicians can feel good about themselves.
