As you will see from our Testimonials page, we generally only publish comments from former clients if they have given us permission to publish their name and photograph as well. Most people who have been in the UK illegally, however, are naturally reluctant to have their names and photographs published on a website; for this reason the identity of the people involved in all our case studies has been anonymised. The facts of each case are however true.

Binh is a Vietnamese citizen who was three years old when his family moved to the UK in 1998, when his mother came as a student, and his father, his sister and Binh were her dependants.  The family had visas until 2007, but after that they became overstayers.

The family first came to us for help in 2010, by which time Binh had a younger sister who had been born in the UK in 1999.  We advised them that the first thing to do was to register this child as British, and only look at making an application for the rest of the family after that.  It took about six months for the youngest girl to be registered as a British citizen, but that was eventually done and so that left us with just four members of the family to try and sort out by early 2011.

A human rights application was lodged soon after, but was refused (with no right of appeal) towards the end of the year.  Because we could not take the matter before an Immigration Judge the only thing we could do was to send the application back to the Home Office and ask them to reconsider their decision, reminding them again that the youngest member of the family was now British.  We warned the family that it was very unlikely that the Home Office would change their mind, and we were right – in June 2013 the application was refused again.

By this time Binh was over 18, and could not be included in the ‘Zambrano’ application we made for his parents and younger sister We lodged an application for Binh on the basis of his private life – that is, that he was younger than 25 years old, but had lived in the UK for more than half his life.  We put in a huge amount of evidence, most of which had already been seen by the Home Office when the first application was lodged in 2011, and put in detailed legal representations in support of the application.

In February 2014 Binh’s application was granted.  It will take another 10 years before he can apply for settlement, but at least he can now take up the University place he has been offered, and go on to get a job and a career and to get on with his life.