Tribunal finds Home Office has wrongly issued British passports to EU citizens and their children

The President of the Upper Tribunal Immigration and Asylum Chamber, Mr Justice McCloskey, has found that the Home Office has wrongly issued British passports to hundreds or even thousands of children of EU, EEA and Swiss citizens born in the UK before 2 October 2000. The case is Capparrelli (EEA Nationals – British Nationality) [2017] UKUT 162 (IAC).

The central plank of the determination is that “immigration laws” does not refer to EU free movement law. The reasoning in the determination relies on the definition of “immigration laws” in another statute, the Immigration Act 1971, and because the tribunal considers that the “ordinary and natural meaning” of the words “immigration laws” ought to be confined to laws made by the United Kingdom Parliament (paragraph 18).