Immigration

Germin joined Duncan Lewis in 2006 as a trainee solicitor and subsequently qualified as a solicitor in December 2008.

Germin is based at our Shepherds Bush branch and specialises in Immigration law and her role includes advising and assisting clients with their immigration and asylum matters. She is qualified under the Law Society’s Immigration & Asylum Accreditation Scheme as a Senior Caseworker, which allows her to specialise in Immigration & Nationality law on a higher level and provide specialist legal help for publicly funded work under the firm’s Legal Services Commission franchise. Germin has much experience in attending to vulnerable clients and predominantly assists unaccompanied minors with their asylum application as and victims of domestic violence with their immigration concerns.

During her time at Duncan Lewis Germin has dealt with some complex immigration and asylum cases and has also represented her client’s at the Asylum Immigration Tribunal. In particular she won an asylum case, which had strong country guidance against it [SL and Others – (Returning Sikhs and Hindus) Afghanistan CG (2005UKIAT00137] this is a notable achievement as most of the relevant case law was against the client’s case.

The case was in relation to an Afghani Sikh lady who claimed religious persecution in Afghanistan. The country guidance case was which determined that there was no risk of persecution for Sikhs in Afghanistan as they had established their own community. I was able to distinguish our client's case from this case in both my skeleton argument and at the hearing itself as a result of our client being a single mother with two dependant children, therefore, her appeal was allowed on article 3 grounds. The Home Office applied for reconsideration of the determination and we also won that hearing on the same grounds.

Germin is fluent in the Arabic language and is a Legal Advisor for the Egyptian Association in Europe. Germin works very closely with The Kuwaiti Medical Office in London; The British-Egyptian Association in the UK and the Egyptian Association in Europe.