EU to rule on Chinese woman's bid for UK residency

A Chinese woman’s fight for the right to stay in Britain will be decided by a European Court verdict today.

Mrs Man Levette Chen, who runs a successful company in China with her husband, moved to Belfast to give birth deliberately to win UK residency rights.

The couple already had one Chinese-born son, but were denied another baby under China’s one-child-only rule.

So in July 2000, a pregnant Mrs Chen went to Belfast, giving birth to Catherine on September 16 that year.

Mother and daughter than moved to Cardiff where they still live, awaiting the outcome of Mrs Chen’s legal action against the UK government for insisting she has no right to stay.

British government lawyers say the Chens were abusing the immigration laws, knowing that having a child in mainland Britain did not give the mother residency rights. But Mrs Chen knew that, under Irish law of the time, anyone born on the island of Ireland had automatic Irish nationality.

And, under EU law, a national of one member state has the right to live freely in any other member state – raising a claim under EU law for Mrs Chen herself to live with her EU-born daughter in the UK.

Mother and baby therefore moved to Cardiff, but the plan backfired when the Home Office refused to allow either of them permission to stay permanently.

An Advocate-General of the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg has already decreed the Home Office decision illegal under EU rules, and if the full Court agrees today, Mrs Chen will have achieved her goal.

British government lawyers have insisted the the UK is entitled to act to stop individuals improperly taking advantage of EU residency laws to get round restrictions under Britain’s own nationality laws.

The European Commission agreed, telling the judges that the Chen family’s interests in winning British residency rights had to be balanced against the UK’s interests in controlling immigration.

But the Advocate-General, in an “opinion” to the full court earlier this year, said it would amount to abandoning the child if the Chinese mother were denied the UK residency rights accorded automatically to her Irish-born daughter.

In effect, said the Advocate-General, the child’s UK residency rights under EU law would be “deprived of any effectiveness” if her own mother could not stay with her.

The full court is not bound to follow the Advocate-General’s view, but the judges reach the same decision in a majority of European Court cases.