(Dissenting judgment) A person who satisfies [the Convention] definition is said to have refugee status. The Convention imposes obligations towards persons having that status. For immigration, Article 31 forbids the imposition of penalties on refugees arriving in another country without authorisation – unlike article 33, it is derogable under article 42. Refugee status is not an international passport which entitles the bearer to demand entry without let or hindrance into the territory of any contracting state. It is always a status relative to a particular country or countries. The obligations of contracting states are, first, not to punish a refugee who has entered directly from the country in which his life or freedom was threatened for a Convention reason and secondly, not to return him across the frontier of that country. In all other questions of immigration control: for example, punishment for illegal entry from a third country, or expulsion to a third country from which there is no danger of refoulement to a country falling within article 33, the question of whether a person has refugee status is simply irrelevant.
Judges:
Lord Goff and Lord Hoffmann (Dissenting)
Citations:
[1996] UKPC 43, [1997] 1 WLR 68
Links:
Cited by:
Cited – European Roma Rights Centre and others v Immigration Officer at Prague Airport and Another CA 20-May-2003
A scheme had been introduced to arrange pre-entry clearance for visitors to the United Kingdom by posting of immigration officers in the Czech Republic. The claimants argued that the system was discriminatory, because Roma visitors were now . .
Lists of cited by and citing cases may be incomplete.
Commonwealth, Immigration
Updated: 01 June 2022; Ref: scu.159203