The High Court has refused a judicial review challenge by Muhammed Saleem to the Minister for Justice’s refusal of his application for long-term residency. Mr Justice Cooke said the application had to be dismissed because the applicant’s affidavits were inadmissible. He also concluded that the refusal should not be quashed on the other grounds argued.
The case concerned a five-year residency scheme for migrant workers. Saleem, a Pakistani national who came to Ireland in 2001 on a work permit, applied in July 2008. The Minister refused the application in May 2010, saying Saleem’s permission to remain had expired in October 2009 and he was no longer legally resident.
The court found that the scheme required applicants to remain legally resident and in gainful employment both when applying and while their applications were processed. The court said Saleem stopped meeting the work-permit employment condition in October 2008, when he left the employer named on his permit. He began working for a different employer in June 2009 without notifying the Garda National Immigration Bureau or obtaining a new work permit. His permission to remain later expired.
Saleem’s judicial review argued, among other things, that delay in processing his application had prejudiced him and that a timely decision would have been favourable. The court said that proposition was too speculative to justify quashing the decision. It found no basis to conclude that the processing time was unlawful, and said that by the time Saleem stopped meeting the employment condition, the application had been pending for less than four months.
The court also rejected a new argument based on European Union law and the birth of Saleem’s Irish-citizen child. It said the Minister had not been asked to decide whether Saleem should remain in Ireland as the parent of an Irish citizen, and the argument was raised for the first time at the hearing, outside the grounds on which leave for judicial review had been granted. The judgment said Saleem remained able to apply to be considered on that basis.
In reaching its decision, the court considered a material discrepancy in Saleem’s affidavits about when he had lost his original job. It held that the affidavits were inadmissible because the record did not establish that their English text had been properly read and understood by him or translated in an appropriate manner. The court said the absence of a usable grounding affidavit was, on its own, sufficient to dismiss the case.
The court refused the judicial review. It did not order Saleem to leave Ireland, and the judgment noted that the decision did not prevent him from seeking a new work permit and renewal of short-term residency.