Alistair Carmichael – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Alistair Carmichael on 2016-07-18.

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether she intends to allow children with refugee status to sponsor their parents for the purposes of refugee family renunion.

Mr Robert Goodwill

The current family reunion policy meets our international obligations and strikes the right balance. There are no plans to extend the criteria. Allowing children to sponsor parents would create perverse incentives for them to be encouraged, or even forced, to leave their family and risk hazardous journeys to the UK to sponsor relatives. This plays into the hands of criminal gangs who exploit vulnerable people and goes against our safe guarding responsibilities.

Where a family reunion application fails under the Immigration Rules we consider whether there are exceptional circumstances or compassionate reasons to justify granting a visa outside the Rules.