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You are here: BAILII >> Databases >> United Kingdom Asylum and Immigration Tribunal >> MK (Adequacy of maintenance, disabled sponsor) Somalia [2007] UKAIT 00028 (13 March 2007) URL: https://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKIAT/2007/00028.html Cite as: [2007] Imm AR 557, [2007] UKAIT 00028, [2007] UKAIT 28 |
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MK (Adequacy of maintenance – disabled sponsor) Somalia [2007] UKAIT 00028
ASYLUM AND IMMIGRATION TRIBUNAL
Date of hearing: 6 February 2007
Date Determination notified: 13 March 2007
Before
SENIOR IMMIGRATION JUDGE MATHER
Between
MK | APPELLANT |
and | |
Secretary of State for the Home Department | RESPONDENT |
DETERMINATION AND REASONS
For the purpose of assessing adequacy of maintenance by reference to state benefits, the standard amount of Income Support, or Jobseeker's Allowance is the starting point for the able bodied: KA and others (Adequacy of Maintenance)Pakistan
[2006] UKAIT 00065 applied.
Where a sponsor has disabilities it should be assumed that enhanced benefits, such as a higher rate of Income Support, or Disability Living Allowance, have been awarded out of necessity and are not available to support dependants coming from abroad.
281. The requirements to be met by a person seeking leave to enter the United Kingdom with a view to settlement as the spouse … of a person present and settled in the United Kingdom … are that:
(i) (a) the applicant is married to … a person present and settled in the United Kingdom … or
(b…; and
(iii) each of the parties intends to live permanently with the other as his or her spouse and the marriage is subsisting; and
(iv) there will be adequate accommodation for the parties and any dependants without recourse to public funds in accommodation which they own or occupy exclusively; and
(v) the parties will be able to maintain themselves and any dependants adequately without recourse to public funds; and
(vi) ….
"It stands to reason, it seems to me, that a single person in receipt of certain benefits has those benefits assessed on the basis that she is a single person and needs that amount of money for her situation".
He went on to say that, unless the appellant had a separate income the appellant and sponsor would, as a married couple, be entitled to reassessment and therefore higher benefits than the sponsor receives now. He also said that there must be an exception to the decision in Uvovo for a person who has additional benefits for medical reasons. He did not accept that the principle in Uvovo applied to the facts in this particular appeal. He also said that if, as the sponsor had said, they wished to make an application for separate accommodation, that would give rise to further assessments being made and an inevitable increase in the award of public funds.
"The requirement of adequacy is objective. The level of income and other benefits that will be available if the family were drawing income support remains the yardstick."
"7. There is a good reason for using the levels of income support as a test. The reason is that income support is the level of income provided by the United Kingdom Government to those who have no other source of income. It follows from that that the respondent could not properly argue that a family who have as much as they would have on income support is not adequately maintained.
8. It perhaps does not necessarily follow that in order to be adequately maintained one has to have resources at least equivalent to those which would be available to a family on income support. But there are very good reasons for taking that view. The family of British (or EU) citizens resident in this country will not have less than that level. It is extremely undesirable that the rules should be interpreted in such a way as to envisage immigrant families existing (and hence being required to exist, because social security benefits are not available to them) on resources less than those which will be available through the social security system to citizen families. To do so is to encourage the view that immigrant families need less, or can be expected to live on less, and in certain areas of the country will be prone to create whole communities living at a lower standard than even the poorest of British citizens. It is for this reason that a number of Tribunal cases …. have held that the basic task for an appellant attempting to show that their maintenance will be "adequate" is to show that they will have as much as they would have if they were able to claim income support. Similar considerations apply to the different benefit structure where there is a disabled person in the family… There have been one or two cases which have indicated that a frugal lifestyle can be taken into account in deciding whether maintenance will be "adequate", in our view those cases should not be followed. In particular we doubt whether it will ever be right to say that children can be maintained "adequately" at less than the level which will be available to a family on income support, merely because one of their parents asserts that the family will live frugally. The purpose of the requirement for adequacy is to ensure that a proper standard, appropriate to a family living in a not inexpensive western society, is available to those who seek to live here."
22. The original decision shall stand –
The appeal is dismissed.
Signed Date: 28 March 2007
Senior Immigration Judge Mather