A Palestinian mother has won the right to join her son and daughter in Britain after arguing that refusal would breach her right to a family life.
A court heard she has been living alone in Egypt since January 2024, suffering post-traumatic stress and “survivor guilt” after 90 family members were killed in the Gaza war.
The woman, who has not lived with her now-adult children for 16 years, kept in touch regularly through WhatsApp and had visited them in the UK several times.
She used the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) after British Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood won a Court of Appeal judgment that ruled a Palestinian family who had used a scheme intended for Ukrainian refugees should not have been allowed to come to the UK. The family were allowed to stay but the decision meant people fleeing the war in Gaza were restricted from using legal refugee schemes to join their families in the UK. Ms Mahmood has proposed toughening the law to prevent any repeat.
In the latest case, a lower immigration tribunal said the decision by the Home Office would have “unjustifiably harsh consequences”. The Home Office appealed that decision but the ruling has now been backed by an upper tribunal. The panel heard there had been no legal error by the judge who considered the role of family in Palestinian and Gazan culture and that the woman had never lived alone until recently.
Judge Therese Kamara concluded: “Evidence spoke of the expectation among Gazans that she would live with her daughter in the UK who was living in relative security and that it would be considered ‘unusual and improper’ for her to be living alone. Not doing so would be ‘viewed as the failure to honour the family and elicit censure and condemnation’.”
She said the current separation was an “emotional rupture” that had profound psychological implications.
A UK Home Office spokesman said: “We are disappointed in the court’s decision, and are now considering this judgment. More broadly, the government is overhauling the domestic application of Article 8 to reduce the number of spurious appeals, while protecting those genuinely in need.”
The tribunal verdict was lambasted by Chris Philp, the shadow home secretary, who called it an “insane decision” that would mean “immigrants here can bring in their parents to be cared for at taxpayers’ expense”. He claimed it “risks opening the floodgates” and called for the UK to leave the ECHR and abolish the immigration tribunal.
