Ramazan Morina: Failed asylum seeker wins UK stay for stepchildren’s sake

A failed asylum seeker has won the right to stay in the UK – for the sake of his wife’s children by another man.

Ramazan Morina, 27, successfully appealed under the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) to stop Britain from sending him back to Albania.

It is the latest example of the ECHR foiling efforts to kick out illegal migrants and follows the Mail revealing how an Indian paedophile avoided deportation after claiming it would harm his own children.

Mr Morina had smuggled himself into Britain when he was 16, unsuccessfully claiming asylum first in 2014 and again five years later.

But he remained in Britain and in 2021 married Soraia Dias, a Portuguese national also living here. She has two children from her marriage to a Romanian which had broken down over domestic abuse claims.

Unlike Albania, Romania and Portugal are in the EU, meaning their citizens have the right to residency in the UK provided they moved here before Brexit.

The Home Office tried to deport Mr Morina back to Albania, saying he was living here unlawfully.

But after instructing solicitors specialising in immigration, he launched an appeal based on the right of respect for private and family life contained in the ECHR.

He has now won the claim after independent social worker Laurence Chester said he had a ‘very close bond’ with Ms Dias’s children.

Backing Mr Morina’s appeal, immigration judge Hugo Norton-Taylor said he had placed ‘significant weight’ on Mr Chester’s conclusion that sending Mr Morina back to Albania would have ‘long-lasting detrimental effects’ on his two stepchildren.

Despite their biological father still playing an ‘active’ part in their lives, separation from Mr Morina would cause ‘significant emotional harm’, Mr Chester’s report added.

It would also have an impact on Ms Dias who is ‘barely coping’ with the turmoil, Mr Chester wrote.

Lawyers for the Home Office had argued there was no reason for Ms Dias and her children not to move to Albania with Mr Morina.

But the upper tribunal hearing was told Ms Dias’s ‘firm and considered’ view was that she wanted to remain in the UK close to her ex-husband’s extended family.

The judge concluded the ‘best interests’ of the children ‘clearly lies in having both biological parents in their lives’ along with Mr Morina.

He added their Romanian father has refused to let them leave the UK and said Ms Dias could be prosecuted for child abduction if she followed Mr Morina to Albania.

Also, neither child has a passport and could not obtain one without their biological father’s consent.

The judge said considering the ‘active role’ played by Mr Morina in the children’s lives, sending him back to Albania alone would be ‘unjustifiably harsh’ on them.

The children’s best interests were his ‘primary consideration’, added Judge Norton-Taylor.

Tory leader Kemi Badenoch has said she is willing to leave the ECHR if necessary – but added that doing so would not in itself solve Britain’s migration crisis.