So the Judicial Appointments Commission is seeking to recruit “up to 20” fee paid Deputy Judges of the Upper Tribunal, Immigration and Asylum Chamber and six salaried Judges of the Upper Tribunal, Immigration and Asylum Chamber. The former are paid £595 per day for up to 30 days per year....
Welcome to the August 2014 edition of the Free Movement immigration update podcast. As normal, the material for the podcast is drawn from blog posts on Free Movement. There was a huge amount of important new material on the blog in August so I’ve had to be selective in what...
Coming back from my break and looking through various updates, I was struck by a series of articles on citizenship and nationality laws in the event of Scottish independence following the vote this Thursday. Some of these seem to me fundamentally to misunderstand the independence process as it is likely...
In a fresh batch of cases from the reporting committee, two of those cases address the question of how grounds should be drafted, what constitutes an error of law and when permission should be granted. One of the cases concerns an appeal by a claimant and the other an appeal...
Some European Union member states are anxious that their own citizens should not circumvent their own sometimes very tough immigration rules by relying instead on EU free movement law. The UK is one such, and has been right from the start. At paragraph 24 of Surinder Singh itself, the court...
In July the High Court awarded an Indian lady, Radha Patel, £125,000 in damages for her treatment by immigration officials on and after arrival as a family visitor. The case is Radha Naran Patel v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2014] EWHC 501 (Admin) and it is extremely...
Anxious scrutiny has been given the expert report from [name of expert]. It is noted that the report was produced for your solicitor “under her instruction” to aid your asylum claim. It is therefore not objective information and it is clear you were not subject to the cross examination that...
In HM and others (Article 15(c)) Iraq CG [2012] UKUT 00409(IAC) (“HM2”) the Upper Tribunal speculated: …we consider that so far as Article 15(c) is concerned the most likely development is that the levels of violence will either continue to reduce or remain at around the same level as in...
I’m now away for two weeks on holiday, returning to work 15 September 2014. There are a few blog posts pre-written and pre-scheduled to keep you entertained until then, and at least one colleague has threatened to write something while I’m away as well. Someone is keeping an eye on...
Lawyers, judges and Home Office officials are all still getting to grips with the effect of the controversial statutory ‘guidance’ to judges on Article 8 introduced by the Immigration Act 2014. One month on it is still far too early to say how it will pan out. It will be...
The Home Office have updated their Chapter 13 Immigration Directorate Instruction guidance on deportation cases. It makes interesting reading for anyone interested in immigration law or human rights but it is essential reading for lawyers representing people in deportation cases. It not only gives insight into the approach of the...
For supporters of the No Borders movement, it is an article of faith that borders are an unnecessary interference with human freedom and human nature. Borders by their nature separate people, break up families, hold back economic and cultural development and discriminate between otherwise equal humans on the basis of...
Given my experience on the float list at Hatton Cross this week, this successful complaint to the Parliamentary and Health Ombudsman makes very interesting reading. An award of £3,600 plus interest for legal costs and £100 for inconvenience was made to a lady whose hearing was cancelled the day before...
From 28 July 2014, the commencement of provisions of the Immigration Act 2014 gives the Secretary of State new powers of certification that will oust “in-country” rights of appeal for foreign criminals. She may do so in any case where she thinks removal would be consistent with the Human Rights...
Kent Law Clinic has published a new report, How Children Become Failed Asylum Seekers, which needs to be read by anyone representing children in asylum cases. Taking the files of 25 “failed asylum seekers” who had arrived in Kent as children, they reviewed the decision making process of the Home...
Want to know what it was like stuck on the float list at Hatton Cross today? Read Emily Dugan’s excellent write up in The Independent. We weren’t the only ones. Several cases were adjourned off to future dates, including cases in which my Garden Court colleagues Taimour Lay and Peter...
The most devastating aspect of the Immigration Act 2014 (“2014 Act”) is the brutal scything of appeal rights. The Government has triumphantly declared that it has reduced the number of appeal rights from 17 (the number of immigration decisions in s.82 NIAA 2002 as it stands, plus s.83 & 83A...
This post is a brief summary of the removals and nationality provisions of the Immigration Act 2014, and is accompanied by an audio extract from a seminar given by Colin Yeo, Sadat Sayeed, Mark Symes and I at Garden Court Chambers on 13 August 2014, at which I spoke on...
The phased withdrawal of US forces has not led to a return to generalised sectarian conflict and indeed appears to have resulted in a significant annualised drop in the number of security incidents … the most likely development is that the levels of violence will either continue to reduce or...
The Immigration Act 2014 requires judges to take into account certain public interest considerations when deciding immigration cases. Little weight is to be attached to x, the politicians tell the judges through the medium of the legislation, and in y situation there is no public interest in removal. More specifically,...
The case of Ahmed and Another (PBS: admissible evidence) [2014] UKUT 365 (IAC) concerns the ‘genuineness’ test that was introduced for entrepreneur applications as the final death knell for the original concept of the Points Based System as a tool for objective decision making. On appeal, the tribunal holds that s.85A of the Nationality,...
Rather harsh but perhaps inevitable decision by Mr Justice Haddon Cave on a student left in the lurch when the start date for her course was changed at the last minute. International students really do get a raw deal from the rigidities of our increasingly absurd immigration system. The official...
At paragraph 4(b) of the newly laid Tribunal Procedure (Amendment No. 3) Rules 2014 is a reference to the Tribunal Procedure (First-tier Tribunal) (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) Rules 2014. These latter rules do not exist yet. As paragraph 4(b) of the amendment rules commences on 20 October 2014, can we...
This post is based on an earlier page I made available to Free Movement Members a couple of weeks ago, before Statement of Changes HC 532 took effect. The commencement date of 28 July 2014 has been and gone and we have also seen commencement of the overseas deportation appeals...
A fascinating study of power play and relationships inside and outside the hearing room has been published as a working paper by the Refugee Studies Centre at the University of Oxford: The culture of disbelief: an ethnographic approach to understanding an under-theorised concept in the UK asylum system by Jessica...
Free Movement is now accepting advertising. Placing adverts is handled through an ad agency, buysellads.com and an advertising pack for those interested in placing adverts is available for download: The decision to accept advertising one is due to a combination of factors. One is that some development work on...
Just a quick post to say that I’ve finished an ebook on Surinder Singh: EU free movement for British citizens. It covers how EU law works, goes over the judgments in Surinder Singh and O v Netherlands, examines the UK’s regulations and Home Office policy, considers the question of abuse...
