Shyti (appellant) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (respondent)
Tuesday 20 – Wednesday 21 June 2023
Second appeal. Deprivation of citizenship pursuant to S.40(3) British Nationality Act 1981 on the basis that the applicant had obtained citizenship by means of fraud, concealment or false representation of a material fact. The applicant was a national of Albania but had arrived in 1999 and claimed asylum as a national of Kosovo. The asylum claim was refused but the applicant was eventually granted ILR in 2010 under the Legacy Programme and granted British citizenship in June 2013. He was convicted of an offence relating to drugs and given a 10 year prison sentence in 2017 and the deprivation decision was made after identity checks revealed that the applicant was an Albanian national with a different name.
The First Tier Tribunal allowed the appeal. The argument that the applicant would have been removed to Albania had his true identity been known was speculative. The deception had only an indirect bearing on the grant of ILR as the latter was based on long residence and the Legacy Programme.
The Upper Tribunal allowed the appeal to the extent that it remitted the case to the FTT in a determination promulgated on 24th January 2022. The applicant would not have been granted ILR or citizenship had the SSHD been aware of the original fraud as to nationality. The ILR had led to the grant of citizenship and there was a causal link between the view that the applicant was a national of Kosovo and the grant of ILR. ILR would not have been granted if the applicant was thought to be from Albania and he would then have been returned.
The issue is whether the UT erred in setting aside the decision of the FTT which the FTT was entitled to make. The SSHD was permitted to advance argument before the UT which had not been advanced before the FTT.
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