Communicated on 3 October 2019
THIRD SECTION
Application no. 15472/19
Muktadir RAHMAN and others
against Switzerland
lodged on 15 March 2019
SUBJECT MATTER OF THE CASE
The application concerns the refusal of family reunification to the first applicant, a Swiss national of Bangladeshi origin who entered Switzerland in 2002 as an asylum seeker. In 2003, after his unsuccessful asylum application, he married a Swiss woman 29 years older than himself. As a result he received first a temporary residence permit and subsequently a permanent residence permit. In June 2009 the couple divorced. On 11 February 2010 the first applicant married, in Bangladesh, a Bangladeshi woman (the second applicant). Their son (the third applicant) was born on 24 January 2012 in Bangladesh.
On 10 August 2015 the applicants asked the Zurich Migration Office to approve family reunification in Switzerland. The Zurich Migration Office granted only the entry of the third applicant, but not the second applicant. The first and second applicants agreed not to separate the son and his mother. The Zurich Migration Office dismissed the applicant’s request for reunification of both mother and son, stating that the deadline to apply for family reunification (particularly for the wife) had been missed and that no important family reasons justified a subsequent family reunification. The applicant’s subsequent appeals were dismissed by the Zurich Administrative Court and the Federal Supreme Court.
Both domestic courts argued that the deadline to apply for family reunification (which is five years from the date of marriage) had been missed. The courts did not consider the applicants’ allegedly important family reasons (taking care of the first applicant’s mother) to be “important family reasons” within the meaning of the domestic law. As a result, they found that their case would not justify an exceptional subsequent family reunification.
QUESTION TO THE PARTIES
Has there been a violation of the applicants’ right to respect for their family life contrary to Article 8 of the Convention?
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