For the purposes of today's hearing, which came about as a result of the appellant having been granted leave to appeal by Judge of the First-tier Tribunal Page on 9 November 2015, I have taken into account the grounds of appeal and the two skeleton arguments (one drafted by solicitors previously instructed by the appellant and one drafted by Uzma Law).
The judge found that the appellant was not credible and that he had in fact submitted a TOEIC certificate from Educational Testing Services ETS which had been obtained fraudulently because a proxy had sat the English language test and not the appellant. This certificate had been submitted in support of a previous application in December 2013. The certificate is dated 14 December 2011.
At paragraph 18 the judge took into account evidence of the appellant's English language ability and found that there was no explanation why the appellant had performed seemingly so well in 2011, but had only just passed an English language test in March 2013. There had in fact been a deterioration in the appellant's English language ability evidenced by the certificates that he had produced and the judge was entitled to attach weight to this.
At paragraph 19 the judge considered an aspect of the appellant's oral evidence to be inconsistent with that at paragraph 10 of his witness statement. The judge was entitled to interpret the evidence in this way. It was not a matter of her having misunderstood the evidence. There is no support for the assertion that the judge did not properly apply the burden and standard of proof or that she failed to consider the appellant's English language ability having heard him give evidence at the hearing.
The judge was entitled to attach weight to the evidence produced by the respondent and prefer that to the appellant's evidence, particularly in light of the transcript of interview and the findings that had been made by the judge in relation to the appellant's English language ability.
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