Currently a comfortable 23 points ahead in opinion polls with just under three weeks to the general election, the Labour Party has published its election manifesto. Sectors of the economy hit by a massive recent hike in salary thresholds for sponsoring skilled workers will be poring over the manifesto for...
This piece is about refugees, asylum seekers, and the Refugee Convention. It outlines who can be a refugee, and how being a refugee and having “refugee status” are two very different things. We also explore the rights and entitlements available to refugees and to asylum seekers awaiting the outcome of...
Welcome to the weekly Free Movement newsletter! When I wrote up RAMFEL’s section 3C case last week I ended on the point that the use of digital immigration status is incompatible with the hostile environment. It is difficult to see how the government’s switch to digital status is going to be anything...
One of the changes wrought by the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 (remember that?) is an apparent increase in the standard of proof in refugee status claims. This change applies to everyone who applied for asylum on or after 28 June 2022. There has been a huge waiting time for...
Lawyers do not own the word “refugee”. The term has been in use since the eighteenth century and has its own evocative, wider meaning in the public consciousness. Those fleeing Ukraine or relocating to the United Kingdom from Hong Kong can validly be referred to as “refugees”, for example, even...
Here is your May round up of Free Movement. In this episode Colin and Sonia look at the latest immigration, asylum and trafficking statistics, including discussion of the fee waiver backlog. They also cover the latest on “safe and legal” routes for those in Afghanistan and Gaza. Sonia nerds it...
The latest quarterly statistics for the tribunals covering the period January to March 2024 have been published today and in news that should not surprise anyone, the clearing of the legacy asylum backlog and increase in refusals has had a huge impact on the number of asylum appeals pending in...
The High Court has held that, when judicially reviewing a decision of the Upper Tribunal refusing permission to appeal (known as a Cart judicial review), there is no oral permission hearing. This was the conclusion reached in Karim v Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) [2024] EWHC 1368 (Admin). The...
Welcome to the weekly Free Movement newsletter! The Home Office appears to be continuing to refuse to release those people being unlawfully detained under threat of being sent to Rwanda, as Bail for Immigration Detainees and others reported further bail grants last week. The new date provided by the Home...
Two claimants, the charity Refugee and Migrant Forum of Essex and London “RAMFEL” and Ms Adjei, have succeeded in a judicial review where it was held that the Home Secretary’s failure to provide people on section 3C leave with digital evidence of their status was unlawful. The case is R...
In the latest and last judgment in some fairly complex litigation around the use of hotels to accommodation and other issues, the High Court seems to have finally got to a point with Kent County Council where they accept that they cannot get around the duty to find a placement...
The Court of Appeal has dismissed an appeal alleging procedural unfairness in a First-tier Tribunal hearing where the judge asked a “significant” number of questions. The court also gave a brief reminder of the importance of counsel raising any issues with judicial conduct during the appeal itself. The case is...
With EU free movement fading into memory, the main visa route available for non British and Irish nationals wanting to work in the UK is now the Skilled Worker visa. The Skilled Worker visa is a sponsorship system: a foreign worker cannot simply apply for this visa unaided. Applicants need...
The Senior President of Tribunals has issued a new practice direction giving guidance to the First-tier Tribunal on the provision of written reasons for a decision. The practice direction refers to the procedure rules which specify where the tribunal must provide written reasons for its decision (rule 29) although “the...
Shortly after it received Royal Assent last year, the Illegal Migration Act 2023 was described as “utterly unworkable and extortionately expensive”, “deeply unethical” and “a traffickers’ charter”. Despite those comments by the shadow Immigration Minister, Labour has not committed to repealing the Illegal Migration Act. However I am hopefully not...
Welcome to the weekly Free Movement newsletter! Let’s start off with some litigation updates. As part of the FDA’s judicial review which remains listed for Thursday this week, the government has told the High Court that it will not carry out enforced removals to Rwanda before the election. That confirmation was formally requested...
The British Nationality (Irish Citizens) Act 2024 was one of the final pieces of legislation passed by the government before dissolution and when brought into force it will provide an entitlement to registration as a British citizen to Irish citizens who meet the requirements. The Act is a short one,...
As the Home Office continues to step up enforcement action in the care sector, we have had another sponsor licence revocation decision involving a large care home operator successfully judicially reviewed in the High Court. In R (New Hope Care Ltd) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2024]...
There is nothing wrong with the integrity of the process by which Educational Testing Service (“ETS”) identifies its English language test results as “invalid” or “questionable”, the Upper Tribunal has said. As a result, where ETS provides evidence indicating that the test relied upon by an individual was taken by...
The mantra of “safe and legal routes” is regularly repeated by the government when justifying increasingly draconian legislation in an attempt to prevent refugees from travelling to the UK under their own steam. The argument is that refugees should use these safe and legal routes instead of arriving in small...
The British National (Overseas) citizens immigration route opened on 31 January 2021. This article sets out the rules for the BNO visa scheme, including recent changes. The Home Office abbreviation is “BN(O)”, which we will use where it forms part of the official title of a route, but otherwise stick...
Welcome to the weekly Free Movement newsletter! What a week. After calling an election for 4 July, the Prime Minister said that no flights to Rwanda would take off before the election. There is no reason to believe that we will have anything other than a Labour government following that election and...
The Public Accounts Committee has published a report “Asylum Accommodation and UK-Rwanda Partnership” in which it criticises the Home Office in both of these areas. By the end of March this year, spending on the Rwanda scheme had reached £240 million. The plan to open four large scale accommodation centres...
The High Court has held that the decision to refuse to grant exceptional case funding for legal aid to a person applying to the Windrush compensation scheme was lawful. The case is R (Oji) v The Director of Legal Aid Casework [2024] EWHC 1281 (Admin). Background to the compensation scheme...
Immigration law is constantly changing and the Home Office updates its guidance documents accordingly. Sometimes you will need to look at an older version of the guidance that applied at a certain time but it is no longer on GOV.UK as it has been replaced with the new version. When...
After over two and a half years of children being held in inhumane conditions on Diego Garcia, the Supreme Court of the British Indian Ocean Territories has ruled that key safeguarding provisions of the 1989 Children Act apply to the territories. Background In September 2021, a group of Tamil asylum...
The Home Office has published statistics for the period January to March 2024 showing a marked drop in the grant rate for asylum cases, tens of thousands of EU Settlement Scheme applications rejected as invalid, and a fee waiver backlog that seems to be rapidly spiralling out of control. My...
In Onuzi (good character requirement: Sleiman considered) Albania [2024] UKUT 144 (IAC) the Upper Tribunal dunks on my old case of Sleiman: This certainly narrows down the available arguments in these citizenship deprivation cases. The Onuzi determination is a strange one, though. There’s no sign of recognition that the exercise...
All successful applications for asylum or humanitarian protection in the UK result in the grant of five years leave to remain, on what is known as a “protection route”. People granted leave on a protection route are then eligible to apply for settlement on completion of those five years. Their...
Welcome to the weekly Free Movement newsletter! Confusion reigned last week, so there is very little press coverage of the decision by the High Court in Northern Ireland that I can actually link to, but here is my brief write up in which I point out that the current Rwanda...
A man who had lived in the UK for over 20 years and was married to a British national before the relationship broke down has been unsuccessful in his challenge to an entry clearance refusal on the grounds that he had not received the notice of curtailment. The case is...
The Home Office has announced more changes incoming on pre-settled status: The Home Office will change the duration of pre-settled status extensions from 2 to 5 years. The Home Office will also remove the pre-settled status expiry date from the digital profiles shown to third parties in the online checking...
The High Court has determined that the Home Secretary’s use of electronic monitoring was unlawful in respect of four claimants and the principles applied in the case will have a wider impact. The court also found that the Home Secretary can lawfully use data collected through electronic monitoring to decide...
CLOSING DATE: 02-JUNE-2024 Seraphus, a leading law firm in the area of UK immigration law and European citizens’ rights, is currently seeking a proactive individual to join our team. We are hiring a remote-working Solicitor or Senior Immigration Caseworker to contribute to our dynamic and talented team. This is a...
