International

UK grants Ghanaian man permanent residency after 47 years

July 11, 2024 11:24 pm

Nelson Shardey. Photo credit: BBC

The United Kingdom (UK) Home Office has granted permanent residency to Nelson Shardey, a Ghanaian, who has lived in the country for 47 years after being told he was not British.

Shardey had assumed he was officially British after arriving in the UK in 1977 to study accounting on a student visa that allowed him to work.

The Ghanaian took on a series of jobs and said no one ever queried his right to live or work in the UK.

Shardey also married a British woman and moved to Wallasey to run his own business — a newsagent called Nelson’s News.

When his marriage ended, he married another Briton, and they had two sons — Jacob and Aaron.

However, the 74-year-old was confronted with a rude shock in 2019 when he applied for a passport to go back to Ghana after the death of his mother.

But the Home Office told him he had no right to be in the UK in the first place.

Authorities told him to apply for the 10-year route to settlement, which costs about £7,000, with a further £10,500 over the same period, to access the national health scheme.

Before his retirement, Shardey performed jury service. In 2007, he was given a police award for bravery after tackling a robber who was attacking a delivery man with a baseball bat.

Nicola Burgess, a lawyer at the Greater Manchester Immigration Aid Unit (GMIAU), sued the Home Office on Shardey’s behalf.

Burgess argued he should be treated as an exception because of his long residence in the UK, bravery award, and service to the community.

Conceding, the Home Office said the Immigration Act allowed it discretion to grant Shardey indefinite leave to remain outside the normal immigration rules.

It will also waive the application fee.

Shardey said he was “overwhelmed, very very happy, and relieved”.

“I would like to thank everybody who believed in us and supported us in words and donations,” he said.

More than £48,000 raised towards his legal fight would be donated to charity, his family said.