HOME Secretary Jack Straw is entitled to refuse applications from illegal immigrants to remain in this country despite what is stated in the European Convention on Human Rights.

British Government policy had to remain supreme, the Master of the Rolls, Lord Woolf stated in a High Court judgment yesterday

"If the Secretary of State is not prepared normally to uphold his policy, his responsibility for upholding immigration control would be totally undermined."

Lord Woolf was giving judgment on a case of a number of applicants appealing against deportation on the grounds that they were married to UK citizens and had children born in this country.

One of them, Mohammed Hussain Ahmed, of Seaton Street, Bradford, a citizen of Bangladesh, entered this country about eight years ago, using a false passport.

Mr Ahmed, a man in his 30s, met his wife who has indefinite leave to remain here in 1993. They married in 1995 and a daughter was born in June 1996. Idris Ibrahim Patel, age 28, of Charlotte Street, Blackburn, is an Indian citizen who entered Britain, hiding in a commercial vehicle in November, 1995.

His application to stay was dismissed on July 26, 1996, and on August 5, the same year, he married. He and his wife had a son and Mrs Patel is now expecting their second child.

Said Lord Woolf: "There is little doubt that it is in part the destitution in their home countries which explains why each of the applicants, who I accept are otherwise decent and upright individuals, are driven to breach immigration control in the first place."

There was no doubt that returning to their homelands would involve hardship.

But he took the view that a young child would "readily be able to adapt to live abroad."

The Home Secretary had to undertake "a balancing exercise - weighing the importance of family life as against the importance of maintaining immigration control."

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