New Video: Another Helpful Deportation Decision from the Court of Appeal: KB (Jamaica)
In this video I summarise the helpful decision in KB (Jamaica) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2020] EWCA Civ 1385 (28 October 2020) where the Court of Appeal restore the decision of the FTT allowing this deportation appeal.
Paragraph 15 contains a helpful summary of the unduly harsh test:
The meaning of "unduly harsh" in the test provided for by s.117C(5) has been authoritatively established by two recent decisions: that of the Supreme Court in KO (Nigeria) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] 1 WLR 5273; and the decision of this court in HA (Iraq) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2020] EWCA Civ 117. It is sufficient to note the following without the need to quote the relevant passages:
(1) The unduly harsh test is to be determined without reference to the criminality of the parent or the severity of the relevant offences: KO (Nigeria) para 23, reversing in this respect the Court of Appeal's decision in that case, reported under the name MM (Uganda) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2016] EWCA Civ 617, in which at paragraph 26 Laws LJ expressed this court's conclusion that the unduly harsh test required regard to be had to all the circumstances including the criminal's immigration and criminal history.
(2) "Unduly" harsh requires a degree of harshness which goes beyond what would necessarily be involved for any child faced with deportation of a parent: KO (Nigeria) para 23.
(3) That is an elevated test, which carries a much stronger emphasis that mere undesirability or what is merely uncomfortable, inconvenient, or difficult; but the threshold is not as high as the very compelling circumstances test in s. 117C(6): KO (Nigeria) para 27; HA (Iraq) paras 51-52.
(4) The formulation in para 23 of KO (Nigeria) does not posit some objectively measurable standard of harshness which is acceptable, and it is potentially misleading and dangerous to seek to identify some "ordinary" level of harshness as an acceptable level by reference to what may be commonly encountered circumstances: there is no reason in principle why cases of undue hardship may not occur quite commonly; and how a child will be affected by a parent's deportation will depend upon an almost infinitely variable range of circumstances; it is not possible to identify a base level of "ordinariness": HA (Iraq) paras 44, 50-53, 56 and 157, AA (Nigeria) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2020] EWCA Civ 1296 at para 12.
(5) Beyond this guidance, further exposition of the phrase will rarely be helpful; and tribunals will not err in law if they carefully evaluate the effect of the parent's deportation on the particular child and then decide whether the effect is not merely harsh but unduly harsh applying the above guidance: HA (Iraq) at paras 53 and 57. There is no substitute for the statutory wording (ibid at para 157).
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