RETROSPECTIVE AMENDMENT OF STAMP 2 A RESIDENCE PERMISSION TO STAMP 3 FOR SPOUSE OF PHD STUDENT, REPRESENTED BY BERKELEY SOLICITORS
Berkeley Solicitors has recently received a significant decision in which the Department of Justice and Equality has agreed to retrospectively amend Stamp 2A permission, incorrectly assigned to our client, to Stamp 3 immigration permission for a number of years.
Our client is the spouse of a PhD student here in Ireland. Our client was dependent on her husband and applied for a visa to Ireland.
She was initially issued Stamp 3 permission; however, she was then issued with stamp 2 A permission at all subsequent registrations.
Stamp 2 A is described as follows on the INIS website:
“Stamp 2 A indicates permission for full time study in Ireland for a course that is not on the official Interim List of Eligible Programmes (ILEP), for a specified period. Stamp 2 A is not reckonable as residence when applying for citizenship by naturalisation.
You may be given Stamp 2A in the following circumstances:
- Semester abroad (ie at an Irish university/college)
- Study at a private secondary school in Ireland”
The issuing of stamp 2 A to our client was contrary to the Minister’s policy to issue stamp 3 permission to the spouses of PHD students. Stamp 2 A was at no time appropriate to her circumstance. She had never been a student in the State, and has always resided here as the dependent of her husband.
The wrongful issuing of stamp 2 A permission deprived our client of a number of years of reckonable residence, which she was entitled to by way of the Minister’s policy.
When the couple had a baby, they intended to make an application for an Irish passport. However, in order to obtain Irish citizenship for a child born in Ireland after 1st January 2005, the child’s foreign national parent must be legally resident in Ireland (this includes Northern Ireland) for 3 out of 4 years immediately before the child was born in Ireland.
As Stamp 2 is not reckonable as residence towards citizenship by birth, our clients’ baby was being deprived Irish citizenship because of the Minister’s error to issue stamp 2 A to our client.
Our office applied to the Minister to rectify this mistake by retrospectively amending our client’s previous permissions from stamp 2 A to stamp 3, based on the fact that a mistake was made on each occasion that a Stamp 2 A permission was issued to her.
A decision was recently issued to our clients which confirmed that her permission was retrospectively amended to the appropriate stamp 3 permission spanning over a number of years, thereby rendering the couple’s child eligible for Irish citizenship by birth.
We are delighted for our clients to have resolved their immigration difficulties.
We also think this is an extremely important and highly positive precedent for others who may have been issued the wrong residence permissions and confirms that, if appropriate, the Department of Justice and Equality can back date residence permission retrospectively.
If you or a family member are affected by the issuance of inappropriate immigration permission please do not hesitate to contact our office.
