Hundreds of fake Kosovans may win right to stay in UK
HUNDREDS of Albanians who lied to win asylum in Britain could escape deportation.
In a landmark legal test case, a violent criminal and two other men are claiming that the Home Secretary was wrong to remove their citizenship.
If the Supreme Court allows their costly appeal, it will mean up to 300 Albanians who gained entry to Britain by pretending to be Kosovan cannot be kicked out.
Dinjan Hysaj, 40, obtained asylum in July 1998 by falsely claiming to be a child refugee from war-torn Kosovo. In 2011 he was jailed for five years after he glassed a man in a pub in Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire.
Agron Bakijasi, 44, was exposed in 2007 when his partner returned to Albania in an attempt to apply for legal immigration status.
Luan Kaziu, 35, arrived in the UK in 1998 but his claims were exposed as a sham nine years later, when his wife applied to stay.
Details of the legal fight came as it was revealed that the Government allowed one Albanian, Ermal Alijaj, to stay after he lost an asylum bid using fake Kosovan ID but reapplied under his real name years later.
In the Supreme Court case, pub- licly-funded lawyers for the migrants say that despite duping the authorities by claiming they were Kosovans fleeing persecution, they should be allowed to remain in the UK.
They argue that as the three men had already been granted indefinite leave to remain, the Home Secretary was wrong to try to remove their citizenship as being ‘null and void from the outset’ when the truth about them emerged.
A Home Office investigation into their cases – and hundreds more similar bogus applications – was started in 2007.
But even since their lies were exposed, they have remained in the UK and fought an extended court battle, funded by legal aid, costing taxpayers hundreds of thousands of pounds. In the meantime, the Home Office has suspended other hearings to strip citizenship from those who exploited the same ruse to claim asylum in the 1990s.
In the case of Alijaj, 37, officials decided that the nine years he spent illegally in the UK bolstered his case because of the roots he put down.
He originally sneaked into Britain in the back of a lorry in 2002. He claimed he was fleeing Kosovo and gave a false name.
After his lies were exposed, he went on the run, biding his time before reapplying for asylum with an Albanian passport sent from home.
Home Office officials are understood to have connected him to his earlier scam but immigration rules at the time tied their hands.
His case is further evidence of how Albanians have been running rings around the authorities while pretending to be Kosovans.
A London-based Kosovan solicitor said more than 300 letters have been sent to Kosovans on behalf of the Home Secretary.
Lawyers in the Supreme Court case say the hearing is not likely to take place until the end of this year and a judgment is unlikely before next spring.