Immigration judge with 'little idea' of law still in job
By all accounts, the workings of the Taylor House Tribunal Hearing Centre in North London — and one judge in particular — leave rather a lot to be desired.
This is the domain of Dr Amir Majid, 64, who has been an immigration judge for the past 20 years. It so happens that Judge Majid is blind — he lost his sight as a young man.
There have been two other blind judges in modern Britain, both highly effective and hugely respected.
A report condemned Dr Amir Majid as having made an error of law in every one of the 13 cases under appeal
Unfortunately, Judge Majid appears to have little in common with either — or, indeed the remarkable Sir John Fielding, their 18th-century predecessor on the bench who was known as the Blind Beak of Bow Street and who, apparently, could ‘recognise more than 3,000 criminals by the sound of their voices’.
Instead, Judge Majid’s arrival in court at Taylor House to hear asylum cases is often greeted with the rolling of eyes and an air of weary resignation. His ‘idiosyncrasies’, to put it politely, were known to few outside the building until this week, when it emerged he had been criticised in an unprecedented ruling for ‘wholly failing to meet the standards that are demanded by the office of a judge’.
An Upper Tribunal — chaired by three senior judges — considered appeals in respect of 13 of his recent cases.
Most involved Judge Majid granting appeals by migrants, from countries including Afghanistan, Syria and Bangladesh, against Home Office orders for them to leave Britain.
The findings were published in a 48-page document. ‘Every one of [Judge Majid’s] decisions shows error of law, in most cases serious error, in most cases multiple serious errors’ is perhaps one of the most damning statements. These weren’t just errors of law, but also errors of fact, errors of judgment — errors, effectively, of almost everything it is possible to get wrong.
Judge Majid’s blindness was no excuse because, to quote the panel, ‘it cannot reasonably be suggested that blindness prevents a person learning or applying law, or hearing both sides and reaching, and expressing, a properly reasoned conclusion’.
The panel ruled Judge Majid's blindness was not an excuse because it could not be reasonable suggested it stops a person learning or applying law
Even so, those who saw him in action were left in little doubt that his lack of sight made it hard for him to check notes that would help him remember the intricacies of a case.
They recall the occasion he mistakenly believed a Bangladeshi man was applying for asylum from his homeland because he was a ‘homosexual’.
In fact, the individual in question had already arrived in Britain, wanted to remain here, and had personally given evidence before Judge Majid, but being gay was never part of his claim. But, thanks to his judgment on his case, the migrant in question might now potentially be at risk if he is eventually forced to return to Bangladesh if anyone believes he is, in fact, gay.
So-called ‘unnatural offences’ are illegal in Muslim-majority Bangladesh, where members of the LGBT community have been hacked to death by Islamic extremists.
The Bangladeshi’s fate, along with most of the other migrants highlighted in the report, will be determined by a new judge — which, of course, means more expense for the taxpayer.
Another case involves a woman from China granted permission to stay in Britain after Judge Majid totally ignored evidence suggesting that she had obtained her English Language certificate — required for applications to succeed — by cheating.
Then there is the Nigerian ‘bride’ allowed to join her ‘husband’ in the UK after Judge Majid appeared to ‘sacrifice his independence’ by assisting the husband and failing to address entirely the central issue of the ‘genuineness’ of their relationship.
Or there’s the Indian student given an additional three years of study leave by Judge Majid, despite the Home Office’s firm belief that the details necessary for his visa application were false.
These are just a few of the examples contained in the report.
Dr Amir Majid gave an Indian student three years of additional study leave despite the Home Office believing details necessary for the application were false
Goodness knows the cost to taxpayers of the unnecessary court hearings generated by Judge Majid’s decisions, or whether there have been any security implications arising from his hit-and-miss approach to those who have come before him — many of whom have been given sanctuary under the auspices of the well-intentioned, but widely-abused, European Convention on Human Rights.
The rulings overturned by the Upper Tribunal panel were handed down by Judge Majid over the past two years.
But the Judicial Office was unable to shed any light on how many others have been successfully challenged since his elevation to the judiciary in 1997.
It is notoriously difficult to sack a judge for incompetence. Most disciplinary action stems from complaints about personal conduct (such as the judge who was removed from office this year for posting online abusive comments about anyone who questioned his verdicts).
But there is a view that Judge Majid survived, when at the very least he should have been encouraged to retire, because the Ministry of Justice feared he might claim discrimination: he has already done so once before.
Until 2009, Judge Majid was a law lecturer at London Metropolitan University, a role he combined with his judicial duties.
Back in the Nineties, he took the college, then London Guildhall University, to an employment tribunal and won £15,000 compensation and a two-year sabbatical after he was found to have been victimised over promotion and performance-related pay.
So, how did he become a lawyer in the first place? It’s probably no surprise to discover that Pakistan-born Judge Majid had an unusual entry into the legal profession.
Initially, he studied at a university of agriculture in Faisalabad, Pakistan, and was in his second year when he went blind.
Three senior judges considered appeals relating to 13 cases and concluded that Dr Amir Majid had 'very little idea' of the law
He came to Britain in the Seventies and, according to his biographical details posted on Facebook, he obtained a law degree from the University of London, before being called to the Bar in 1980.
He began his career as a barrister with Cloisters Chambers, which has been established for more than 60 years and is based in the legal heartland of Inner Temple.
Not long after joining Cloisters, he married his wife Heather, a secretary, with whom he had a son, although they have now separated.
Some confusion surrounds aspects of his CV, which has been posted on his Facebook page and begins thus: Dr Amir Ali Majid (A Legend).
Underneath are listed dozens of academic bodies and institutions in Britain, the U.S., Germany and Pakistan with which he has been seemingly associated.
It is quite possible that their records are incomplete but, when contacted, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, where Judge Majid says he was once a visiting professor, said they had no knowledge of him.
There is no confusion about the position he is most proud of: ‘Second blind person in the UK to be appointed to a judicial post.’
His qualification as a barrister was sufficient (in 1997) to merit his appointment as a judge by the Lord Chancellor. To begin with, he split his time between Taylor House and London Guildhall University, where he was a lecturer.
Part-time immigration judges are paid £500 a day and have to sit a minimum of 15 days a year, but Judge Majid is believed to have considerably exceeded that threshold.
Usually, he would arrive in court with one of the clerks pushing his wheelchair and he had an assistant to read documents. Instead of taking notes, Judge Majid dictated details of the case into a dictaphone.
According to a senior immigration barrister, Judge Majid was always more interested in the spirit of the law than the letter of the law.
But changes in legislation since 2009, and new rules post-2012, have removed the potential for discretion in judgments. ‘They were probably changes he found hard to grasp — or maybe he didn’t like them,’ said the barrister.
This is evident from the mangled interpretations, pronouncements, and observations in Judge Majid’s now notorious rulings.
‘The burden of proof is upon the Appellant and the standard of proof is the balance of probabilities,’ Judge Majid once declared about a case. Only it isn’t. ‘The balance of probabilities’ is the standard in civil claims. In asylum claims, the standard is lower — ‘a reasonable degree of likelihood’.
On another occasion, he had this to say: ‘I am conducting an appeal and not a Judicial Review and therefore cannot restrict myself in conducting the proper evaluation of the evidence on the matters of fact . . .’
The tribunal panel scrutinising his rulings were left mystified by the passage which opens with that statement. ‘We have read and re-read this. We do not know what it means,’ they said.
Neither, they added, did it ‘look as though any attempt had been made to check the decisions for grammatical or linguistic error’.
One phrase in particular was used frequently by Judge Majid — ‘the evidential elements of the evidence’ — which the three judges (led by Judge Mark Ockelton, vice-president of the Upper Tribunal) said ‘ought not to have survived being in one draft’.
It was not the only phrase that cropped up again and again. Judge Majid made a habit of cutting and pasting identical paragraphs for multiple cases — even though they were wrong and irrelevant.
Even a lawyer who won his immigration appeal heard by the judge made an official complaint, saying: ‘He became angry with both witnesses and legal representative as a result of the strained communication and frequent misunderstandings.
‘I would go so far as to suggest that the nature of the proceedings before Judge Majid were so shambolic as to bring the Tribunal into disrepute and undermine public confidence in an effective judicial system.’
The case of Chinese migrant Xiaomei Wang perhaps epitomised this. Until a few weeks ago, she was living with her family in a flat above a takeaway in Southend.
Mrs Wang was granted permission to remain here with them because she produced an English Language certificate demonstrating she had an acceptable grasp of the language, and her Chinese partner was a British national.
But, in the process, Judge Majid ignored claims that Mrs Wang had obtained her certificate by sending someone in her place to undertake the test on her behalf.
He also accepted that her partner was a British citizen simply because the man recited aloud what he claimed was his passport number — without providing any documentary proof.
There is one minor point to add here. Judge Majid had referred to Mrs Wang’s children as the ‘appellant’s grandchildren’.
However, the tribunal panel said, in the circumstances it was ‘the least of the factual difficulties in the case’.
Mother-of-two Sandra Bopolonga also had reason to be grateful to Judge Majid. She arrived in Britain from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in 2005 to join her ‘husband’ and their two children.
Miss Bopolonga was given permission to stay for two years. More than a decade on, she is still here. The family lives in a three-bedroom housing association property in Plaistow, East London. The rent is subsidised by the council.
The father of her kids is 44-year-old Caster Mpangi. He says he has had various jobs in the past (taxi driver, bus driver), but is currently a student at London Metropolitan University.
Home Office officials never believed Miss Bopolonga’s story that she had been in a continuous relationship with Mr Mpangi for two years before coming to Britain. Nor was she able to produce her original Congolese wedding certificate, and it has been trying to remove her from Britain ever since.
Miss Bopolonga finally appeared before Judge Majid in 2015. ‘We provided everything to the judge,’ insists Mr Mpangi.
Judge Majid ruled in Miss Bopolonga’s favour by wrongly claiming that the best interests of the children created a ‘knockout element’ — a winning legal argument.
But this is actually one factor among others. Judge Majid also failed to grapple with the issue of why the whole family could not simply return to the Congo to live.
Judge Majid was not at Taylor House this week. He politely declined to comment when we called at his handsome double-fronted Victorian terrace near Epping Forest, East London.
The three judges who examined the 13 cases at the centre of the controversy said: ‘Judge Majid’s decisions give the impression that the judge has very little idea of either his own (limited) powers or the content of the law that is in issue.
‘They are full of observations, many of which are of dubious correctness, some of which are of dubious relevance, and a few of which are wholly inappropriate.’
There is only one question, really: why is he still a judge?