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https://www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/rein-in-immigration-judges-or-lose-the-public-58vq6bm0r

It does not take a cynic to observe that the father’s concern for his son’s health and family life did not extend to giving up crime and staying out of jail. Mr X is in his early thirties and his known criminal career spans 14 years. How many other children’s and family’s lives did he damage in that time? The law here, it seems, is focused on the interests of the criminal and his family and not on the malign effect on a society required to keep him here.

Mr X is the most recent of many cases. In February a judge agreed that a Pakistani paedophile who had spent four years trying to entrap pre-pubescent girls into sex should not be deported as that would be “unduly harsh” on his daughters, aged three and four — even though the father had been banned by the criminal courts from living with his daughters at the time. The court had found he was “in denial” about his offences with “very little prospect” of rehabilitation. The Home Office appealed against the deportation refusal. The case is still being fought.

Such defences are common. An illegal Albanian migrant, jailed for running a large cannabis farm, is now a legal resident because his preschool daughter needs a “male role model”. Senior judges agreed his rights to family life outweighed the public interest in deporting him. Other criminals are allowed to remain on additional human rights grounds: that they could face harsh treatment in their home countries. This month a Jamaican rapist, burglar and violent attacker, an illegal overstayer, successfully challenged a deportation order on the ground that his lengthy criminal record was so serious he might not be eligible to return to a witness protection programme he had been in in Jamaica.

https://archive.ph/rTmlm

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