Case No. UKUT-00175-(IAC)

4. It is necessary to set out the background to the case in some detail because it is important to understand the context in which the decisions to grant ILR and then to revoke it were made. Asylum application 5. The applicant is a citizen of Albania who was born on 04 May 1980. He entered the UK illegally on 14 September 1999 with the assistance of an agent. He was 19 years old on arrival in the UK. 6. The applicant applied for asylum the following day, claiming that he was born in Kosovo on 04 May 1982. He accepts that he made false claims about his nationality and date of birth. 7. The policy framework in place at the time is not disputed. The widespread persecution of Kosovar Albanians in the years running up to and during the conflict that took place in 1998 and 1999 led to a rare situation whereby the respondent recognised ethnic Albanians from Kosovo as refugees or granted them temporary protection solely on account of their ethnicity . By the time the Immigration Appeal Tribunal considered the position in Dyli (Protection – UNMIK – Arif – IFA – Art.1D) Kosovo CG* [2000] UKIAT 00001 the situation in Kosovo had changed, as had the respondent’s policy. Hostilities ceased on 10 June 1999 on the same day that the United Nations Security Council passed resolution S/RES/1244. The NATO led Kosovo Force (KFOR) entered Kosovo and the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) was created. In light of these developments the respondent suspended consideration of asylum claims from the Republic of Yugoslavia (as it then was) but continued to grant Exceptional Leave to Remain (ELR) to asylum seekers who applied before 24 March 1999. On 13 September 1999 the Home Secretary announced a return to the usual position whereby claims would be considered on their individual merits. 8. The policy relating to claims by Kosovar Albanians had only just changed when the applicant entered the UK. It seems unlikely that he would have been aware of the change when he claimed asylum, and even if he was, there was still a far better chance of being granted leave on humanitarian grounds than if he had claimed asylum as an Albanian national. The most likely motive for the first deception was to increase his chance of being granted leave to remain at a time when many genuine Kosovar Albanians had been recognised as refugees or were being granted ELR. The most likely motive for the second deception was to take advantage of the respondent’s policy to grant limited leave to remain to unaccompanied asylum seeking children (UASC). 9. The asylum application was not considered promptly. The claim was refused on 27 March 2001, by which time the situation in Kosovo had stabilised. Even according to the false age given by the applicant he did not benefit from the UASC policy. It is said that an appeal was dismissed on 24 July 2001 and his appeal rights became exhausted thereafter. 10. The applicant failed to report to the respondent when required. It appears that he was listed as an absconder. The respondent’s GCID notes from August 2010 record that no absconder action was taken. The decision letter claims that an enforcement visit did take place. Whether absconder action was taken or not, the applicant remained in the UK in the knowledge that he had no leave to remain and was liable to removal. Legacy Programme 11. In July 2006 the respondent instigated the Case Resolution Programme, more commonly known as the Legacy Programme. We will not repeat the history here because details of the programme were outlined in the Administrative Court decisions of Hakemi & Others v SSHD [2012] EWHC 1967 (Admin) and Geraldo & Others v SSHD [2013] EWHC 2763 (Admin). In Geraldo , the broad purpose of the programme was summarised as follows: ‘39. The Case Resolution Programme or the Legacy Programme, was instigated by the government in July 2006 to deal with a vast backlog of unresolved asylum claims, that is to say for the most part failed asylum claims, some going back many years in which the unsuccessful claimant had neither been removed nor a decision made to grant him or her leave to remain in the UK on some basis other than the claimed refugee status either within the Immigration Rules or outside the Rules, and with many of whom the Home Office had lost contact. One of the problems was that as at July 2006 there were in the region of 400-450,000 electronic and paper records concerning such claims within the Home Office which had not been opened or reviewed (and indeed once the programme was under way further records came to be included, ultimately reaching a total caseload of some 500,000 – see the report of the Parliamentary Home Affairs Select Committee for April – July 2011) but which were recognised to be ' riddled with duplication and errors and cases of individuals who have since died or left the country or become EU citizens' , (to quote the statement of the then Home Secretary Dr John Reid MP to Parliament in July 2006). As Mr Neil Forshaw told me, until the exercise of going through the vast archive of assorted records was undertaken to identify how many cases remained to be dealt with, the true nature of the task undertaken under the programme could not be known. 40. The programme was an operational programme only. That is to say it was a programme designed to deal with the backlog, with its own internal priorities and procedures, but it was always made clear that the programme did not involve any kind of amnesty and that cases handled within the programme would have applied to them the same generally prevailing law and policy which applied to all other immigration and asylum cases, being handled within other units elsewhere within the UKBA. I say at once that none of the evidence before me supports the proposition that there was a discrete 'legacy policy' different from that applied to other, for example, failed asylum cases not within the programme, where consideration was being given to the grant of leave outside the Rules (on this aspect see further the decision of Burton J in