[2025] UKUT 00090 (IAC)

The unifying policy objective of the ACRS was ‘resettlement,’ in the sense envisaged by the UNHCR, which defined settlement as a process for offering refugees the possibility to rebuild their lives in a third country and to become fully participating members of a society in which they could settle permanently.

§§6 to 8 of the ARIPS did not define the eligibility for separate categories of the ACRS. These were introductory passages. The eligibility criteria began under the heading, “Eligibility and referrals.” Under this heading, §23 of the ARIPS referred to providing those “put at risk” with a “route to safety.” It was not a static assessment of past risk. Prioritisation under §23 was not linked to having been evacuated under Operation Pitting, but to specific, future risk. The purpose of the ACRS was to resettle those in need of a route to safety. The Applicant did not need a route. He could return to his home, Nepal.

If the Respondent’s argument on eligibility failed, the Applicant also failed to meet either “Pathway.” While he may have assisted the UK efforts in Afghanistan, he had not “stood up for values such as democracy, women’s rights and freedom of speech, rule of law.” He was not a member of a vulnerable minority. Rather, the Applicant’s case fell into one of the “other groups,” introduced in §8 of the ARIPS, namely under other provisions of the Immigration Rules.

On the issue of nationality, the Respondent agreed that the Applicant did not need to be an Afghan national to benefit from the ACRS. That was clear from §28 of the ARIPS, under the heading, “further details on eligibility.“ It was equally clear that the class of eligible TCNs was narrow and limited to family members, as defined in §29. The Applicant was not the family member of an Afghan national. Other TCNs who were not family members of Afghan nationals and who were safe in their home countries did not need to resettle in the UK as a “route to safety.” The Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme was just that – designed for Afghan citizens and certain TCN family members to resettle because they continued to face risk in Afghanistan. Even then, eligible people were only considered for prioritisation. They were not entitled to settlement.

Contrary to the Applicant’s skeleton argument, the Civil Service submissions on clarification had been fully accepted and changes to the ACRS and ARIPS reflected this. The same submissions stated that it had “always been an underpinning principle of our resettlement schemes that we do not include nationals of countries considered safe by the UK” (B/[154]). The same submission noted that:

“You (Minister for Immigration) and the Home Secretary recently agreed that Third Country Nationals (TCNs) who were evacuated as part of Op Pitting but able to safely return to their country of origin are not eligible for Pathway 1 of the ACRS.”

The changes reflected no change to ACRS, as properly interpreted, at all. They were clarification for what the Respondent always believed the purpose of the ACRS to be. Any debt to the Applicant had been repaid many times over with his evacuation as a gesture of goodwill, a grant of limited leave and offers to pay for his repatriation to Nepal, to return to his family.