4. Mr J complains that UKVI’s decision to refuse his application for leave to remain (LTR gives you permission to stay in the UK for a set amount of time) in 2015 and his removal from the UK in 2016 were a breach of his human rights.
5. Mr J says he cannot find reasonable employment in his home country and he has a lot of debts.
6. Mr J would like financial compensation and an apology.
7. On 23 December 2013, Mr J applied for indefinite leave to remain (ILR is when you have permission to stay in the UK with no time limit) on the grounds of long residence in the UK. On 7 April 2014, Mr J’s application was refused. Mr J appealed on 30 April, but this was dismissed on 21 August.
8. On 7 October, Mr J’s permission to appeal (PTA) application to the first tier was refused. In December 2014, Mr J applied for LTR on the grounds of long residence. His application was refused on 13 March 2015 because he did not have ten years lawful residence in the UK. Mr J failed to leave the UK as required.
9. On 26 March 2015, Mr J applied for LTR under the unmarried partner route. This is where an unmarried partner of a British citizen can apply to join their partner in the UK. UKVI rejected the application on 25 August because the sponsor on his application was his mother, not his partner.
10. On 19 May, Mr J applied for LTR outside the Immigration Rules. UKVI refused this application on 15 September, giving Mr J an out of country right of appeal. UKVI did not immediately send the refusal notice by post, but instead planned to serve the refusal in person.
11. On 16 February 2016, UKVI wrote to Mr J to acknowledge his request to voluntarily leave the UK and to say that all voluntary departures were subject to a one-year re-entry ban. Mr J was advised he could reapply for entry clearance to the UK, which would be considered in line with the Immigration Rules.
12. On 23 February, Mr J was detained and served with removal directions.
13. On 8 March, Mr J was removed from the UK and sent to his home country. On 29 March, UKVI responded to Mr J’s email and explained that his arrest and detention was lawful because he had no lawful basis to stay in the UK.
14. Mr J appealed on 1 April and his appeal was dismissed on 15 November.
15. On 15 August, Mr J made a formal complaint and asked UKVI for an ex-gratia payment (a goodwill payment) and £5 million.
16. UKVI responded to Mr J on the same day and explained it planned to serve the notice in person, his arrest was lawful and he had no lawful basis to stay in the UK.
17. UKVI says it is satisfied that Mr J’s applications had been handled correctly. It says that although his ex-gratia claim was submitted within six years, Mr J did not explain why he waited five years to send the request. It did not uphold the complaint.
18. On 6 September, Mr J wrote to UKVI asking it to reconsider its ex-gratia decision.
19. On 8 September, Mr J sent his complaint to his MP (from when he lived in the UK). He got a response on 23 September. It advised that the Home Office was unable to give away any information about Mr J’s case because he did not live in the UK.
20. On 4 October 2021, UKVI sent its final response telling Mr J he had not raised anything new that it had not already answered. It advised it could only repeat what had already been said. The response directed him to bring his complaint to us if he was still unhappy.
21. On 21 March 2022, Mr J wrote to the MP again, asking them to refer his complaint. After getting no response, he sent his complaint to us on 26 March without an MP referral. We told him an MP referral was required.
22. On 13 February 2023, we contacted the MP’s office to ask if it would refer the complaint. It said an MP could sign his complaint form if he had lived in their constituency in the last 15 years.
23. On 17 February, the MP referred Mr J’s complaint to us.
26. The Act says a person needs to make their complaint to an MP within a year of becoming aware of the problem. We cannot investigate complaints brought to an MP after one year, unless we can see there is a good reason for us to. We discussed this with Mr J to understand the reasons why he could not complain sooner.
27. Mr J was aware of the problem on 23 February 2016, when he got the removal paperwork. For Mr J’s complaint to be in time, he needed to bring his complaint to us by 23 February 2017.
28. Mr J appealed but did not formally complain to UKVI about what happened until 15 August 2021. Mr J wrote, ‘In August 2021, I decided to launch a formal complaint to address the high level of injustice I received, particularly from the Home Office’.
29. This is five and a half years after becoming aware of a problem (the decision to remove him from the UK).
30. If we used the date Mr J’s appeal against UKVI’s decision was dismissed (15 November 2016), his complaint is still four years and nine months out of time.
31. When asked why Mr J did not raise a formal complaint with UKVI sooner, Mr J said he went to court to protest about the way he was ‘maltreated’ and raised issues about ‘the fake document that Home Office used to turn me into a slave, but the judge shut me down’.
32. Mr J added: ‘I continued to send messages to the Court of Appeal because I can't get decent employment. One day a lady replied to me, and I saw the complaints email in it. I sent several messages to that Home Office email. I attached the letter of recent job refusal message that I received from [a foreign national office]’.
33. While we understand that Mr J says he is unable to find reasonable employment, this does not have any bearing on why he did not bring his complaint to us sooner.
34. In another email, Mr J says he was dealing with emails from debt recovery organisations. We understand this would have been a stressful time for Mr J, but this is not enough for us to set the time limit to one side.
35. We are aware that Mr J did chase his MP (at the time) to sign and refer his complaint in September 2021. Again, this is five years and seven months after he knew there was a problem.
36. We realise this is unlikely to be the outcome Mr J was looking for when he came to us and we can understand his frustration at being removed from the UK.
37. We have not seen good reasons to put the time limit to one side. Even if Mr J’s complaint was in time, we do not have the authority to challenge UKVI’s decision. If Mr J believes there had been a breach of his human rights, he would need to get legal advice on how to challenge it. For these reasons, we are unable to consider Mr J’s complaint further. We thank him for bringing his concerns to our attention.
1. We have carefully considered Mr J’s complaint about UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI).
2. We are sorry to learn of the events that led to Mr J’s complaint and understand his frustration.
3. We have decided to take no further action on this complaint because it falls outside our time limit and we have not seen good reason to put this to one side.