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Help!  Right to reside and detention in immigration centre

Ruth Knox
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Vauxhall Law Centre

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Total Posts: 551

Joined: 27 January 2014

Can anyone suggest anything?  I have a Polish client who had been working and entitled to full-time HB when he was arrested by the immigration authorities, detained and then deported.  This is now over 12 months ago, so he has already been evicted, but I would still like to establish his entitlement to HB in principle.  I don’t know the full details of his case, but there were petty offences in both the UK (where he had been making arrangements to clear fines) and in Poland.  He is hoping to make an out of country appeal against deportation but this will not be heard until May.  In the meantime, from the day of his arrest, his HB was ended on the basis that he was not working and therefore had no right to reside.  I don’t see that I can argue that he retains worker’s status because his ceasing work does not fit into the categories in Paragraph 6 (2), and he has no other status from family, permanent residence, etc etc.  I see that detention in an Immigration Centre or even prison does not necessarily interrupt or invalidate a permanent right to reside but this is not helpful here.  The only very slight glimmer of hope I can see is Essa which says that “periods of wrongful detention, pre-trial remand that lead to an acquittal or a non-custodial sentence, or periods of immigration detention can count towards permanent residence if the claimant qualifies before and after the detention in question.”  But even on the assumption that, if my client were successful in his appeal he would immediately find work, this is more to do with being allowed to count towards permanent residence in the way some other gaps are, than establishing a right to reside during the actual period of detention.  I feel that I will have to withdraw this appeal unless I can see some legal arguments, but it would seem unfair, on the face of it, for a person who might well end up being able to stay in the UK losing his Housing Benefit and therefore his home, because of a period in an Immigration centre.  All suggestions welcome.

Ruth Knox
forum member

Vauxhall Law Centre

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Total Posts: 551

Joined: 27 January 2014

Well, got no suggestions!  My own update is that I am using Essa (which was an Immigration tribunal)  and there are also some cases referred to in Essa but have found nothing very direct. Ruth