Feeling frustrated about the UK immigration "Sole Responsibility" loophole

[LoveFamily]

I’m struggling with something I witnessed recently. A colleague’s children were just granted ILR under "Sole Responsibility," but the reality is they are a very active, two-parent household. The father lives and works abroad for financial reasons but visits 5-6 times a year. Also, the mother and children always went abroad to visit the father during summer holidays. The father is involved in every major decision and is exercising the responsibility as a father normally, just that he is not physically here most of the time. I am 100% sure because I have known the family for a few years and the husband always discussed children's education, future career choices, etc.

My colleague told us that with the help of an immigration consultant, they framed the application to make it look like she is the only decision-maker, even though it's a "normal" healthy family. It feels unfair to those who play by the rules or someone who could not afford to hire a consultant ? Is the Home Office really unable to look past "well-prepared" paperwork to see the truth of a family’s setup? My colleague said the consultant told her that the frequent visits would not necessarily stop the Home Office from granting ILR under sole responsibility as normally they do not challenge self declaration of sole responsibility and paperwork submitted unless strongly contradictory evidence is present.

So, the requirement of both parents' ILR or application for ILR at the same time is meaningless as this could be 'gamed' by seasoned consultant ?

[zimba]

There is no magic that a 'consultant' can do to enable someone to get ILR. If the consultant or the applicant is making false claims on an application, they are committing deception which is an immigration offence. If one parent is NOT in the UK and is not involved, then the other parent is continuing sole control and direction of the child’s upbringing, including making all the important decisions in the child’s life. That is what sole responsibility means. UKVI expects to see evidence of this when applying.

The immigration rules cover this in detail under Appendix Children: https://www.gov.uk/government/publicati ... e_parental

You are not considering whether the child’s parent (or anyone else) has day-to-day responsibility for the child, but whether the parent has continuing sole control and direction of the child’s upbringing, including making all the important decisions in the child’s life. If not, then they do not have sole parental responsibility for the child. You must carefully consider each application on a case-by-case basis. The burden of proof is on the applicant to provide satisfactory evidence that a parent has sole parental responsibility.

For entry clearance cases, it may be necessary to use local intelligence relating to the applicant’s home country or location to advise on what evidence you should expect to see, or what is likely to be available that you could reasonably ask for, as well as how much weight to give to particular types of evidence. Country-specific information can be found in the country of origin information or via the relevant UK embassy or high commission staff.