I received a decision letter from the Home Office stating that my care visa application was denied due to false information provided. Specifically, I was asked if I had previously been refused entry to the UK and I answered "no," despite being denied entry 12 years ago. I believed that this information was no longer relevant as records are only kept for 10 years. I have since received an Administrative review letter and am unsure if I should proceed with a review or submit a new application. Can you provide any advice on what my next steps should be?
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The question asks Have you ever been refused entry at the UK border (emphasis added). Even believing that records are only kept for 10 years (and I’m not sure that’s the case) it is quite clear you should have answered Yes. Reapply and explain your error. You might get lucky and convince the ECO you made an innocent error. But I wouldn’t get your hopes up TBH - everyone claims ‘innocent error’ when caught out in a lie.– TravellerCommented Jul 25, 2023 at 14:03
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Related question travel.stackexchange.com/questions/101247/…– TravellerCommented Jul 25, 2023 at 14:10
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1If you really want to pursue this, then get a small pile of money together and get a lawyer. The advice in Traveller's link is quite sound and extensive. I'll be a bit more brief. I believe you should probably consider leaving the UK out of any future travel/immigration plans going forward. I can't know where you got the 'ten year' idea from, but considering that several immigration routes - perhaps most notably the 10-year-legal-stay ILR route - can take atleast that long, the idea that records would be somehow discarded seems nonsensical when you think about it to any serious degree.– ouflak ♦Commented Jul 28, 2023 at 7:42
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2 Answers
Being refused entry is no big deal. It happens all the time. It happened to a British tourist going to Spain on a holiday, and on arrival she couldn't find her passport which actually was in her luggage, perfectly valid, but she was just too stupid to find where it was. She had to fly home, but could have come back the next day, this time with her passport in her hand.
Now if this lady ever has to fill out a form asking "have you ever been refused entry", then the answer that she must give, and the only answer that won't get her into deep trouble, is "YES". The next question would be "why were you refused entry" and she can answer truthfully, and will have no problems getting in.
Same with you. You have been refused entry 12 years ago. That isn't held against you. They may check the reason for the refusal, and they may check whether these reasons are still valid, and refuse entry for the same reasons, but not because of the refusal 12 years ago. You could have been refused entry two years ago, when you were single, unemployed, with no money and they were sure you were trying a job. Today you have a wife and two children, a brilliant job and plenty of cash, so the refusal from two years ago will not be held against you. They may/will check if the same reasons still apply, but they don't, so you are fine.
But what you did was you lied about it. That means they couldn't check whether the same reasons still applied (except as you found out, they can). And that is a serious problem. So that will require a good lawyer who can very carefully try to convince them that this was an innocent error, a mistake, and not a lie. That's the rule, that you never lie on these forms.
I have since received an Administrative review letter and am unsure if I should proceed with a review or submit a new application.
You don't seem to have a valid basis for an administrative review. From Immigration Rules Appendix AR: administrative review:
What is administrative review?
AR2.1 Administrative review is the review of an eligible decision to decide whether the decision is wrong due to a case working error.
The error here was yours, not the case worker's.
Can you provide any advice on what my next steps should be?
Your next step should be to hire a lawyer. To argue that your answer was not willful misrepresentation will require some delicacy. If you make any further missteps you will dig yourself even deeper into the hole you're in, which is already fairly deep. For more information about that, see gnasher729's answer.
You may want to read Immigration Rules part 9: grounds for refusal. In particular, see the section False representations, etc. grounds and search the whole page for deception.
