Who was the client?
The client was a Chinese national who entered the UK as a 11 year old child student. He lived and studied in the United Kingdom for 10 years but had exceeded his absences by 200 days. The objective was to apply for settlement for the client based on long residency but to try to mitigate against his absences

What did we do?
Having conducted an assessment of the client’s background, we believed the client’s case provided strong characteristics to present a 10-yearlong residency indefinite leave to remain (ILR) application.

 

We put forward a very comprehensive statement, letters from his school and supporting documents to demonstrating the client was fully immersed in British culture and had established his own private life in the UK.

Why was it complex?
Our client had exceeded his absence allowance which was 540 days by 200 extra days because he was boarding at a UK School and had no guardian/parent to stay with outside the school term. This mean that our client had no choice but to return to his family out of school term. These compassionate circumstances were not covered in Appendix Continuous residence, which meant there was a high probability that the Home Office could refuse the application.

What was the outcome?
We provided photographic evidence of our client heavily involved in school activity since the age of 11. Now 22, he provided evidence of his studied until post graduate to show how the client had come the UK as a child, but had spent his formative years in the UK and was now an adult. We provided letters from his teachers and a statement from the client and his parents in China to explain that our client has no choice to return to China during his vacations, but that he had immersed himself in UK society and planned to make the UK his home.

The Home Office concurred with our position, recognising that the client was fully integrated in the UK, and that despite his large absence from the UK, due to his extenuating circumstances, he was granted indefinite leave to remain
 
Key takeaways: 
If there are mitigating factors which can justify a large number of absences or absences which would otherwise break the continuity of leave, it is important those these reasons are shared with the Home Office because you never know when the mitigating factors would be taking into account.