RS (Immigration/Family Court Liaison)

This case provides an example of the importance of co-operation and communication between the two jurisdictions, family and immigration, where two sets of parallel proceedings, closely dependent upon the child that are ongoing.

The Family Court held that the child’s best interests did not lie with her parents but by being placed in long term foster care in the United Kingdom. The Family Court regarded it as acceptable for contact with her parents to be face to face annually, for example by visiting them in India at public expense and monthly by means of Skype. Since those arrangements satisfied the child’s best interests in the Family proceedings, when those interests were the paramount concern, it followed that the immigration Tribunal could be satisfied, when considering the child’s best interests as a primary consideration in the Deportation proceedings, that deporting her parents did not interfere with the child’s best interests. The arrangements identified by the Family Court as meeting the child’s best interests provided for the likelihood of the Appellant’s deportation.

The Appellant’s deportation was accordingly not unlawful on Human Rights Grounds.