Why do the home office need my Ex's Parents passports

[Ms_O]

Hi,
I made a mistake 4 years ago of overstaying my visa, and for the past 4 years I have been trying to get leave to remain so I can be in my son's life. His mum is British but we are not together so I went down the parent of a British Child route.
I have been fighting this now for 4 years!!! They conveniently lose documents, need more things from me or just fob me off with "It's in Review". It's got to the stage where I got my local MP involved and she did a fantastic job getting it to the next stage for me. However, they decided they needed my ex's passport to prove she's British. Ok that's fine. She has never travelled so I paid for her a passport. They received that. Now they have written back to tell me they want my Ex girlfriends mum and dads passports!! I am so angry. What in the hell do they need these for? To top it off, her parents have said they won't provide this as they don't want to get involved.
I feel like i'm at the end of my fight and I will need to go home but i'm heartbroken i will miss our on my 4 year old son's life!
Is there anything else I can do? I feel like they're being awkward just because they can and are trying to make it as hard as possible for me. I can't find any legal writings of validated reasons for why they'd need such information.
Any advice you can offer me would be great.

[secret.simon]

How old is your ex-girlfriend?

Did your ex-girlfriend submit the passports of her parents when she applied for her passport?

If she was born after 1983, assuming that she was born in the UK, she would only be a British citizen by birth if at least one parent was either a British citizen or settled in the UK.

It is possible that while processing your application, it may have come to the observation of the caseworker that there is no proof that your ex's parents were British citizens and therefore that the British passport issued to your ex may have been issued in error.

[Obie]

That is outrageous, it is not the caseworker's job to go behind the British passport issued by HM passport office, unless in the course of their duties they realised that the father from.whom she derive citizenship was not married to the mother.

Probably a JR will be the most appropriate step to take in these circumstances.

[secret.simon]

Probably a JR will be the most appropriate step to take in these circumstances.

Obie, what would the basis of the JR be?

Also, depending on the specific circumstances, as it was a very recently issued passport, surely the caseworker could look at the details and perhaps liaise with HMPO in case there are doubts about the validity of the passport issued. Passports have been known to have been issued in error.

[Obie]

The caseworker is not a passport examiner or a citizenship examiner. That is clearly outside his or her scope. Her checks are confined to establishing if a passport is fake or genuine.

That is the job of HMPO who would have checked before issuing the passport.

The Caseworker is not trained or has jurisdiction to investigate the lady's generation lineage. He or she clearly has no information that indicates that the parents were not British or were not married. She is seeking to get such evidence and this is outrageous.

What will be the point of asking applicant to provide a passport, if the caseworker would not trust it and seek to do their own assessment. That will be crazy.

Had the OP not provided a passport, then it would have been open to the caseworker to make enquiries to establish if the mother of the child is a British, in light of the fact that a passport has been issued, there really is not need for this.

Furthermore it is unlawful and unreasonable to ask OP to provide passport or documents in relation to the child's grand parents, which is clearly beyond his control, when the test is to determine if the child is the child of the OP, that he has a genuine parental relationship with him, is playing an active role in his life and intend to continue doing so.

A person is entitled to file a Judicial review, if the Home Office delay is unacceptable, and they are requesting documents which are wholly unnecessary to determine the claim.

[ouflak1]

The caseworker is not a passport examiner or a citizenship examiner. That is clearly outside his or her scope. Her checks are confined to establishing if a passport is bad quality or genuine.

That is the job of HMPO who would have checked before issuing the passport.

The Caseworker is not trained or has jurisdiction to investigate the lady's generation lineage. He or she clearly has no information that indicates that the parents were not British or were not married. She is seeking to get such evidence and this is outrageous.

What will be the point of asking applicant to provide a passport, if the caseworker would not trust it and seek to do their own assessment. That will be crazy.

Had the OP not provided a passport, then it would have been open to the caseworker to make enquiries to establish if the mother of the child is a British, in light of the fact that a passport has been issued, there really is not need for this.

Furthermore it is unlawful and unreasonable to ask OP to provide passport or documents in relation to the child's grand parents, which is clearly beyond his control, when the test is to determine if the child is the child of the OP, that he has a genuine parental relationship with him, is playing an active role in his life and intend to continue doing so.

A person is entitled to file a Judicial review, if the Home Office delay is unacceptable, and they are requesting documents which are wholly unnecessary to determine the claim.

I feel your passion. But it has been my understanding that the UK government, and any government, has every sovereign right to go to any length to determine matters of citizenship and the privlidges afforded from such. It would seem an unreasonable restraint on a nation to exercise its own identity, and even counterintuitive, if it couldn't pursue such matters however it wished.

Now that said, I believe nonsense is only going to get worse. I don't believe that the people who pushed through that 1983 law really thought this through. Now it's grandparents. When will it become great-grandparents and so-on? What if such things can never be determined clearly even if that individual's lineage has only ever been British and otherwise traces back generations?

I've never hidden my bias as one coming from a nation that practices jus soli. But it's just so much cleaner, efficient and obvious.