AFIS - all very well to give a lecture on safety but the context of this thread appears to be a specific regulatory issue concerning a matter which is obvious in its alleged breach. This is very different to e.g. in-flight visibility which cannot be satisfactorily determined both during a flight and afterwards.
You are right about a "visual approach" under IFR. I was doing that in the USA and for some reason thought it's called something different over here. Airliners do that routinely when they go to places with nice weather.