Welcome to the February 2015 edition of the Free Movement immigration update podcast. For February I cover some tribunal, High Court and Court of Appeal cases, some quickly and some in more detail, I mention some upcoming legislative changes that will be covered in more detail next month and some...
Rather than write my own detailed piece on the Supreme Court’s judgment in Pham v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2015] UKSC 19 I’m mainly going to refer you an excellent piece by Simon Cox on the Open Societies Foundation website: Case Watch: UK Supreme Court Backs Government...
Anyone working with child asylum seekers — lawyers, civil servants, judges — should read UNHCR’s new publication The Heart of the Matter: Assessing Credibility when Children Apply for Asylum in the European Union. It came out a couple of weeks ago but looking for it just now to update the...
James Brokenshire, until the dissolution of Parliament last week the Minister of Immigration [EDIT: I am reliably informed that he is still the Minister – thanks go to Alison Harvey!], has confirmed that the recent tightening of policy on granting British citizenship was not aimed at refugees. The change of...
The image above is of a Californian doctor sobbing outside the hospital building having lost the 19 year old patient on whom he was operating. It has gone viral on social media. It was also picked up in The Guardian in an interesting article by Deborah Orr: The image of...
Case of R (On the Application Of Islam) v The Secretary of State for the Home Department [2015] EWCA Civ 312 (27 March 2015) on Edgehill, Halumudeen, Singh etc etc: More Edgehill, Halumudeen, Singh 9/7/12 hokey pokey bollocks. How does this stuff reach the Court of Appeal? Strewth. http://t.co/BaeBUzP4dv —...
A successful judicial review claim by a trafficking victim is reported at R (on the application of FM) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2015] EWHC 844 (Admin) (26 March 2015). Philip Mott QC sitting as a Deputy High Court Judge found that the Home Office had unlawfully...
The Conservative Party is pledging radically to expand out of country appeals to any migrant with no leave after the election. The Daily Mail piece is clearly well informed and includes some examples that can only have come from a Home Officer brief. Given that appeals will only be on...
The Migration Advisory Committee has been asked to look at the Tier 1 Entrepreneur route again and are holding a consultation which closes on 12 June 2015. Details here. The issues to be examined are: the initial eligibility criteria of access to funds is sufficient and whether other criteria, for example,...
Upper Tribunal Judge Craig takes a hardline stance against certification as clearly unfounded an Article 8 claim based on 19 years unlawful residence in the case of R (on the application of Singh and another) v Secretary of State for the Home Department IJR [2015] UKUT 134 (IAC): In this...
The full list of fees for immigration applications from inside and outside the UK applying from 6 April 2015 has been published. There are some hefty and puzzling increases: a 50% hike to £162 for visiting academics for some reason, a 57% increase to £592 for relatives of refugees, a...
The High Court has found part of the Tier 1 Entrepreneur rules to be irrational in the case of R (on the application of Sabir & Ors) & Anor v The Secretary of State for the Home Department [2015] EWHC 264 (Admin). Despite succeeding on part of the challenge, though, the case...
UPDATED. Statement of Changes to the Immigration Rules HC 1116 restricts Syrians with transit visas travelling to the UK from travelling through the UK and forces them to apply for a UK visa. The refusal rates for such visas have steadily increased during the conflict and now stand at 60%....
It is all change for rights and grounds of appeal on 6 April 2015. The previous range of grounds of appeal, which included section 84(1)(d)of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 — “that the appellant is an EEA national or a member of the family of an EEA national...
Normally, where an application for judicial review is made the first stage is for a judge to consider the grounds for judicial review and the acknowledgement of service and summary grounds of defence, then decide without holding a hearing whether permission should be granted. Lawyers commonly refer to this decision...
Home Office Minister Lord Bates, responding to a question from Lord Green of Migration Watch on population control and the effect of the children of migrants: Lord Green: To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their latest assessment of the impact of international migration on the population of the United...
The Court of Appeal condemns the complexity of the Points Based System in the case of Hossain & Ors v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2015] EWCA Civ 207. Lord Justice Beatson says at paragraph 30: The detail, the number of documents that have to be consulted, the...
Back in July 2014 I picked through the official Home Office quarterly statistics to plot the refusal rate for visa applications by Syrians to travel to the UK since 2010. There are many Syrians with family or other links to the UK who, perhaps despite or perhaps because of the...
In Blakesley v Secretary of State for Work and Pensions [2015] EWCA Civ 141 the Court of Appeal considered whether the UK Government is in breach of its international obligations towards refugees because of the lack of any provision to make back-payments of welfare benefits to those asylum seekers who,...
The Supreme Court last week rejected the Home Office’s attempt to keep Jamaica on the list of safe countries for asylum claims despite an estimated 10% of the population in Jamaica being subject to persecution because they are gay. This blow to the Home Office came the same week that...
In a very welcome determination that comes a mere two years after the abolition of full rights of appeal for visitors but in the middle of the scything of full rights of appeal for everyone else, President McCloskey has turned his attention to the question of the relevance of compliance...
Last week highlighted the blight of the UK’s immigration detention camps. We saw the broadcast of two major Channel 4 investigations into conditions at the Yarl’s Wood and Harmondsworth immigration detention camps here in the UK. The reports were based in part on work by Corporate Watch, which I am...
Displaying genuineness: cultural translation in the drafting of marriage narratives for immigration applications and appeals by Natasha Carver is available for free during March. This is the abstract: This article uses Finch’s (2007) idea of ‘display’ to analyse the process in which autobiographical statements for family immigration applications and appeals...
The Court of Appeal takes a strict approach to the interpretation of the Tier 1 Entrepreneur immigration rules on third party funding in the linked cases of Iqbal & Tank v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2015] EWCA Civ 169. This is in line with earlier Upper Tribunal cases.
...A new case from the Upper Tribunal (re-)interprets Chikwamba again: R (on the application of Idris) v The Secretary of State for the Home Department (IJR) [2015] UKUT 95 (IAC) [EDIT: curiously identical to R (on the application of Thakral) v The Secretary of State for the Home Department (IJR)...
The circumstances in which an asylum claim may be treated as abandoned by an applicant have been extended with effect from 27 February 2015. Statement of Changes HC 1025 has inserted new wording into paragraph 333C of the Immigration Rules so that it provides: An application may be treated as...
In Dube (ss.117A-117D) [2015] UKUT 90 (IAC) the Upper Tribunal expresses its opinions on the new Part 5A of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002, introduced by the Immigration Act 2014. The Court of Appeal has already had its say in the case of YM (Uganda) v Secretary of...
I’m away next week (back for a hearing on Friday) and have scheduled a few blog posts to keep you reading in my absence. Watch this space for posts on the introduction of the Immigration Act 2014 appeals regime, the new rules for visitors, a new tribunal case on statutory...
