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"Now [1987] the only requirement is that a returning resident should have had indefinite leave to enter or remain prior to departure. Questions of ordinary residence are no longer to be considered."
It would seem from this (though, if the matter is to be pursued with the Home Office, this should be checked) that immigration practice followed the first alternative, whatever the Home Office view of the true position.
3.
The change in the rules this year has had the effect that the Home Office have cured the ambiguity by coming down in favour of the second alternative.
They cite
But
authority for that and logically and as a matter of immigration control, that alternative is defensible. that does not invalidate the contention of Mr Kuo and no doubt others that, in addition to proving facts (a) and
(b), the rule now provides a further (if revived) obligation to satisfy an immigration officer on each time of entry that they intend to settle, ie take up ordinary residence in this country. No amount of "semi-soothing" words by the Home Office or assertions that "it is not intended to change current practice" are likely to affect their apprehensions about possible difficulties of satisfying immigration officers of future intentions. Indeed, if they look upon "settlement" in this country and their use of it only as a safety line while continuing to live as a matter of course in Hong Kong, they are probably right to have such apprehensions.
4.
Mr Kuo's letter is not all that easy to follow, and I doubt whether it would be sensible to put it to the Home office at any stage. The answers to the question you pose
about his letter are as follows:-
(a) a person described in your paragraph 2 (a) who seeks
entry after an absence of less than 2 years may be required by the immigration officer under the new rule to satisfy the latter that he intends to take up ordinary residence in the United Kingdom. (I have my doubts whether an immigration officer would let his fancy roam as widely as Lord Scarman did in the quotation at page 4 of Mr Kuo's letter.) It could well be that immigration officers will require more than a brief conversation in order to be satisfied of an intention to enter the UK for ordinary residence even taking into account Mr Waddington's placatory words at column 859 of Hansard for 15 May, unless Home Office instructions that "a person seeking readmission as a returning resident within 2 years of having settled status here should normally be readmitted without further inquiry" are sufficiently firm;
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