Case No. UKUT-00043(IAC)

85. Turning first to consider the public interest considerations applicable in this case, it is clear that there is a public interest in the maintenance of immigration control which in the context of a partner application for entry clearance has the legitimate aim of furthering the economic well-being of the UK. 86. It is an established part of Article 8 jurisprudence that (to repeat the words used by the Court in Ahmut v Netherlands ): “(a) The extent of a State's obligation to admit to its territory relatives of settled immigrants will vary according to the particular circumstances of the persons involved and the general interest. (b) As a matter of well-established international law and subject to its treaty obligations, a State has the right to control the entry of non-nationals into its territory. (c) Where immigration is concerned, Article 8 cannot be considered to impose on a State a general obligation to respect immigrants' choice of the country of their matrimonial residence and to authorise family reunion in its territory.” 87. In the appellant’s case, one specific question that arises with potential impact on the weight we attach to the public interest, concerns Home Office policy. As noted earlier, neither the legislation nor the Rules nor any current Home Office policy expressly identifies the fact that an entry clearance applicant has children with British citizenship as a factor of any particular weight. There is no entry clearance analogue of EX.1 or s.117B(6). The statement in the Family Policy guidance cited earlier, about “not normally” expecting a qualifying child [one subcategory of which is a British citizen] to leave the UK”, is not mirrored at all in their entry clearance context. 88. The most that can be said, drawing on the submissions made by the respondent in MM (Lebanon ), is that there is an understanding at the level of policy that the MIR can cause hardship and that this rule has a particularly harsh effect on families with British citizen children (see [81)]. By the same token, as we noted above at paragraph 55, Lady Hale spelt out in the next paragraph: “But the fact that a rule causes hardship to many, including some who are in no way to blame for the situation in which they now find themselves, does not mean that it is incompatible with the Convention rights or otherwise unlawful at common law.” 89. The defects the Supreme Court discerned in the Rules and Home Office guidance at the time were subsequently addressed by the respondent, notably by way of the amendments made within GEN.3.3-3.1 in August 2017. 90. Applicants who have a British citizen child will be able to require the respondent to have regard to that fact, as one of the matters to be considered in undertaking her Article 8 assessment at large. As noted earlier, nationality is one of the factors recognised by the Strasbourg jurisprudence on Article 8 in family life cases as a relevant factor. An entry clearance applicant with a British citizen child is entitled to have that factor considered as relevant in a way that an applicant with a purely foreign national child is not. However, beyond this we are not permitted to go. It is abundantly clear from what we have stated earlier regarding the Article 8 case law, drawing on the principles set out in Boultif , Uner , Ahmut v Netherlands among other case - and our own analysis of nationality and British citizenship - that the degree of weight to be attached to nationality will always depend on the particular circumstances and the individual facts and that it is not regarded as a necessarily weighty matter. There is also the point that a dual national child enjoys the benefits of his or her other nationality. There is nothing in the Strasbourg or domestic jurisprudence that requires the respondent or a tribunal, as a general matter, to ascribe greater significance to the child’s European/British citizenship than to the citizenship of the other country. That is unsurprising, since any such requirement risks being seen as a form of Eurocentric arrogance.