Can Immigration Status Obtained by Deception Be Revoked? Key 2026 Court of Appeal Case

Immigration leave obtained by deception – asylum claim

It is often said that honesty is the best policy, and this may be particularly true in the field of immigration law, and thereby hangs a tale – which is a familiar one.

A case at the Court of Appeal, Albert Bokqiu v Secretary of State, heard in February 2026, tells us the story.

Mr Bokqiu was in actual fact a citizen of Albania and was in actual fact aged 18 when he came to the UK on 4 October 2000. But he claimed to be a citizen of Kosovo and under 18, ie a child, and he claimed asylum on the basis of being an unaccompanied child.

The claim for asylum was unsuccessful but he was granted Exceptional Leave to Remain (a historical immigration category) in 2001. This was granted because he was understood to have been a child when he applied for asylum. He applied for further leave in 2003 and was granted Indefinite Leave to Remain but, for some extraordinary and unexplained reason, not until 2011. But anyway so far so good, he now held, at least ostensibly, settlement.

He subsequently married a British woman and they had children (born British). He subsequently in 2013 applied for naturalisation – using the false details – but this was refused, not on the basis of the false details but apparently on the basis that he had not declared a previous Caution.

So things were not going entirely well for him by now but at least he still held settlement. But after a gap of a few more years things suddenly got much worse and the chickens came home to roost. In July 2020 the Home Office wrote to him to tell him that they were considering revoking his settlement status, and in this case it was because of the historical deception regarding his age.

This is an old story: someone gets severely punished for something they did many years ago – the slate does not get wiped clean. Is this really “fair”? Well, opinions vary, but it is what the law prescribes: if you obtain something by deception you can have it taken away, however long ago it happened.

The judge put it this way, briefly and ominously: “the Home Office carried out checks which revealed that Mr Bokqiu was an Albanian national who had been born on 10 August 1982”.

His settlement was subsequently revoked, and the Home Office issued a notice that he was liable to administrative removal from the UK. However, nothing happened and he stayed here.

But things now became more complicated. He committed some criminal offences and he got a prison sentence, and now deportation came into the picture, as it may do with “foreign criminals”. As many readers may know, deportation is not the same as administrative removal; the former is generally more serious. He was ultimately served a Deportation Order by the Home Office in January 2023.

He resisted the deportation and he appealed to the First-Tier Tribunal, the Upper Tribunal and then the Court of Appeal.

The most relevant part of the law goes like this. There is a defence if:

The migrant has been lawfully resident in the United Kingdom for most of their life,

(b) they are socially and culturally integrated in the United Kingdom, and

(c) there would be very significant obstacles to their integration into the country to which they are proposed to be deported.

But by the time the case got to the Court of Appeal the issues had been narrowed down: firstly, had the mathematical calculation for lawful residence been correct and, secondly, in any case, can leave obtained by deception law be deemed “lawful residence”? If the answer to the second question is No then the first question is irrelevant.

The court did not have any difficulty in finding that the Home Office’s decision had been correct and that the first question was indeed irrelevant. The most relevant parts of the court’s decision were as follows:

In my judgment Mr Bokqiu was not lawfully resident … when he had ELR and then ILR. This was because the ELR and ILR had been obtained by committing a criminal offence by stating falsely that he was under 18 years old and from Kosovo, at a time when he was aged 18 years and was from Albania. I come to this conclusion for three main reasons. First, a status which has been obtained by the commission of a criminal offence cannot reasonably be described or interpreted as “lawful”. It makes no sense to describe residence pursuant to a status which has been obtained by the commission of a criminal offence, as lawful …

Secondly, a status obtained by fraud cannot be equated to a status which has been obtained without deception. This is because fraud has always been recognised as a thing apart … Once fraud is proved it is capable of vitiating transactions.

So there we are. If there ever was any doubt on this subject, leave obtained by deception cannot be deemed lawful residence and, as we saw, the existence of a family in the UK is not necessarily enough to save the migrant.

If you have any issues in this area we are GSN Immigration can try and help you.

Oliver Westmoreland

Senior Immigration Lawyer