Litigation is an expensive business, and immigration is a litigious business. As the recent brouhaha around judicial review revealed, the vast majority of judicial review cases in the High Court and on appeal up to the Court of Appeal and Supreme Court are immigration cases. On top of that are...
In asylum cases it is still referred to as The Legacy, as if it were a second rate Spagetti Western. In immigration cases it has the more prosaic title of the ‘migration refusal pool’. The UK Border Agency’s inspectorate has today [update: link to report here] unveiled yet more cases...
The charity Bail for Immigration Detainees (BID) asked me to speak at their AGM last night and I was delighted to accept. It was held at Amnesty International’s Human Rights Action Centre in Shoreditch. I expected the auditorium seating to split open and launch Urgent Action One at any moment....
We at Renaissance Chambers wish to join the Bar Association of Sri Lanka, the International Commission of Jurists and the UK Bar Human Rights Committee amongst others and pay tribute to this brave woman who makes this statement though she fears for her life. Her dismissal signals to many the...
The decision of the Court of Justice of the European Union in Zambrano requires a lot of explaining. The process of seeking to understand its impact will continue for some time at an EU level and domestically. In Harrison (Jamaica) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2012] EWCA...
I have collected together all the blog posts for 2012 into an ebook, which is now available on the Kindle store. By a surprising automated process, the blog posts were automatically sucked up by some sort of scary blog muncher website and then spat out in pdf form, then converted...
A barrister … must promote and protect fearlessly and by all proper and lawful means the lay client’s best interests and do so without regard to his own interests or to any consequences to himself or to any other person (para 302, Code of Conduct of the Bar of England...
First of all, some stats from the blog for 2012: 722,000 page views 2,000 page views per day on average 356,000 visitors 2 min 46 sec average visit duration 2 pages viewed per visit on average 149 new blog posts in 2012 (three per week) 21,500 unique visitors per month...
Just a reminder that time does not run over the Christmas period for lodging appeals in the First-tier Tribunal against its decisions. See the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal (Procedure) Rules 2005 (as heavily amended) rule 2 definition of ‘business day’, which excludes 25 to 31 December, read with rule 57,...
The UK Border Agency today announced that Santa has been arrested as part of the #fakexmas campaign. Apprehended importing a considerable number of toys seemingly made by reputable manufacturers, Santa is reported to have admitted that the toys are cheap knock offs made by “elves”. A UK Border Agency spokesman...
“I agree with my noble friend that no area is more complex than the whole business of the Immigration Rules and the procedures surrounding them.” Lord Taylor of Holbeach in response to Lord Lester of Herne Hill, Hansard, 12 December 2012: Column 1087 (with thanks to Alison from ILPA).
...The consultation on changes to the procedure for judicial review has opened and it closes on 24 January 2013. Regular readers will recall that these proposals were said by David Cameron to be part of the Government’s efforts to combat the recession, an effort comparable to Britain’s wartime effort against...
Statement of Changes HC 820 was laid before Parliament yesterday, 12 December 2012, to come into effect today, 13 December 2012. You need look no further than the fact that this is the ninth Statement of Changes to the Immigration Rules this year alone if you need to know what...
This is such a good explanation of the census data on the foreign-born component of the ‘usually resident’ population that I felt I had to share it. Really good work by the Office of National Statistics. It is a five minute look at the data with some very simple but...
In the case of R (on the application of Omar) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2012] EWHC 3448 (Admin) (30 November 2012) the High Court has held that charging a fee for a human rights based immigration application will itself breach human rights law where the individual...
On 22 November 2012 a new Statement of Changes was laid which brings in quite a few amendments to the Immigration Rules. A large proportion of those changes are yet again to clarify, correct and/or put into place what was apparently always intended with the July 2012 changes. Other changes...
Following on from the case of Ahmadi ( s. 47 decision: validity; Sapkota) [2012] UKUT 00147 (IAC) the Upper Tribunal has (for now) resolved the perplexing issue of what to do when the Secretary of State combines a refusal to vary leave with a Section 47 removal. This issue is...
Carrying on from FM’s open season article last week, it is clear that immigration lawyers are getting a hard time of it at the moment: first it was judge bashing and now the lawyers are in the firing line. The pernicious pastime of naming and shaming the legal profession needs...
The reported Upper Tribunal case of Kalidas (agreed facts – best practice) [2012] UKUT 00327 (IAC) underscores some important points of practice and procedure in the First Tier Tribunal (FTT). The case concerned an appeal before the FTT where it appears to have been agreed between the Appellant and Respondent...
There has been a lot of media coverage of judicial review applications in the last few days, as most readers will no doubt have noticed. The Government has announced plans to (a) reduce the time limit for judicial review from three months, (b) increase the court fees for bringing a...
The Upper Tribunal has issued a new Country Guidance case on Ahmadis from Pakistan, the case of MN and others (Ahmadis – country conditions – risk) Pakistan CG [2012] UKUT 00389 (IAC). Shivani Jegarajah and Colin Yeo of Renaissance Chambers (and this blog) were instructed, as were Manjit Gill QC,...
The President of the Queens Bench Division, Sir John Thomas, has issued a dire warning to solicitors applying for last minute judicial reviews and injunctions in immigration cases. The comments come in the case of R (on the application of Hamid) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2012]...
After seeing the Strasbourg case of Singh v Belgium (33210/11) highlighted here on Free Movement, Balkrishna Gurung of Howe + Co Solicitors (with assistance from David Saldanha) has commissioned a translation and offered to share it with blog readers. Many thanks! The key paragraphs concerning the authentication of the documents...
The Centre for the Study of Emotion and Law (CSEL) has recently collaborated in a new article Non-clinicians’ judgments about asylum seekers’ mental health: how do legal representatives of asylum seekers decide when to request medico-legal reports? by Lucy Wilson-Shaw, Nancy Pistrang and Jane Herlihy, which considers decisions made by...
An old friend sent me this yesterday. Having not read it for years, Owen’s lines about his dreams and helpless sight struck me even more forcefully than the rest. All these years later there are still those that consider that Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is not debilitating and serious and...
Following on from Hakemi, the High Court has again scrutinised the leave to remain under the “Legacy” cases, and found the SSHD’s adherence to the policy wanting. In a welcome move last Friday Mr Stephen Morris QC, sitting as Deputy High Court Judge, quashed as unlawful the decision to refuse...
Back to more serious blogging and the detention mini series ASAP, but I simply can’t resist a quick plug for Renaissance Chambers, the team behind this blog. On Thursday last week we were awarded the tasteful little logo to the right by Chambers and Partners, the well known guide to...
Imprisoned lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh and banned film maker Jafar Panahi have been awarded the Sakharav Prize. The Sakharav Prize, named after the Soviet scientist and dissident, is an annual prize, awarded by the European Parliament to individuals or organisations fighting for human rights and fundamental freedoms. Nasrin Sotoudeh is currently...
The Upper Tribunal has rejected the Government’s attempt exhaustively to define the scope and meaning of Article 8 private and family life in the controversial new immigration rules introduced in July 2012. The case is MF (Article 8 – new rules) Nigeria [2012] UKUT 00393 (IAC) and the result will...
The Court of Appeal recently gave judgment in the case of R (on the application of Muqtaar) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2012] EWCA Civ 1270, a challenge by a Somali national to his detention under administrative immigration powers for the extraordinary period of 41 months, or...
On Tuesday this week the Court of Appeal handed down two important new cases on deportation. The first is Mohan v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2012] EWCA Civ 1363 and concerns the interaction of family and immigration law. The second is R (on the application of George)...
The publishers, Sweet & Maxwell, have been kind enough to provide a review copy of the 2nd edition of Free Movement of Persons in the Enlarged European Union by Nicola Rogers, Rick Scannell and John Walsh. Nicola and Rick are formerly of Garden Court Chambers and recently retired from the...
It is Sri Lanka Charter Flight day again today. Just a quick one to say that the UK Border Agency has suddenly withdrawn parts of its new October 2012 Operational Guidance Note (link to old version) on Sri Lanka. Paragraphs 3.3.4 and 13.6 have been substantially amended (see TAG website...
The Immigration (European Economic Area) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2012 (SI 2012/2560) come into force on 8 November 2012. There are two bits of good news for applicants and one piece of bad news. For previous news, updates and commentary on Zambrano and developments since that case see the EU...
In his judgment in the case of R (On the Application Of Bhavyesh & Ors) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2012] EWHC 2789 (Admin) Blake J has dismissed the latest attempt to challenge the requirement that foreign spouses learn English before entering the UK. This challenge is...
From its conception in 2007, the Free Movement blog has been about sharing information and ideas. When the blog first went live with an anonymous author and zero readership the ‘About’ page had this to say: All you need to know about me is that I’m a UK-based immigration lawyer....
