A CHINESE woman who moved to Belfast from China to give birth has won the right to live in Britain.

The Government’s refusal to grant residency rights to Man Levette Chen was a breach of EU discrimination laws, a judge said yesterday.

She had moved to Northern Ireland to give birth because she wanted to win Irish nationality rights, which would automatically give her the right to live in Britain. But the Home Office refused mother and daughter permission to stay.

The Advocate-General of the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg ruled that the decision was illegal. If the full court upholds the ruling later this year, Mrs Chen and her daughter, Catherine, will be allowed to stay in Cardiff, where they are awaiting the result of the legal wrangle.

The court was told that Mrs Chen knew that giving birth in Britain would not give her daughter automatic residency rights because of the terms of the British Nationality Act. But she also knew that giving birth anywhere in the island of Ireland gained Irish nationality.

Mrs Chen’s plan was to take her Irish daughter to live in Wales under EU rules that allow nationals of one member state the right to settle in another. Mrs Chen and her businessman husband already had a son and could not have another in their own country under China’s “one-child” rule. So, when she was six months pregnant, in mid-2000 she moved to Belfast and the child received an Irish passport.

The Home Office argued that as Catherine was a baby she could not exercise any EU rights. Even if she could, Mrs Chen could not live in Britain because the law allowed only “dependent relatives” to join their family.

The case was passed to the European Court by an immigration tribunal after the Chens claimed their treatment was a breach of EU rules. The European Commission backed the Government, arguing that the family’s interests had to be balanced against the UK’s interest in checking immigration.

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