In MF (Albania) v SSHD [2014] EWCA Civ 902, the Court of Appeal considered and upheld the criticisms of the appellant’s country expert made by the Upper Tribunal. In doing so, the Court appeared to disapprove of the practice of instructing expert witnesses to comment on particular findings made by...
The latest unannounced official HMIP report on Haslar immigration detention centre reveals that the centre staff had blocked the websites for Bail for Immigration Detainees (BID) and Amnesty International: Detainees had access to the internet, but some key websites were blocked. The officer on duty in the internet suite could...
HM Chief Inspector of Prisons report on an unannounced inspection of Dover Immigration Removal Centre (IRC) between 3–14 March 2014 (published 7 July 2014) once again highlights critical concerns surrounding Rule 35 of the Detention Centre Rules 2001. Dover IRC is generally commended, although its atmosphere appears to remain that...
I was just taking a look at the official immigration statistics to compare refusal rates for different nationalities. This jumped out at me, though: the refusal rate for visa applications by Syrians now stands at 57%. There was a 16 percentage point jump in the refusal rate between 3rd...
The Court of Appeal has finally grappled with the question of how to apply the best interests of children in an immigration context and given detailed guidance on how judges should approach the exercise. The judgment, in the case of EV (Philippines) & Ors v Secretary of State for the...
[Update: CPD course now available for Members] Welcome to the June 2014 edition of the Free Movement immigration update podcast. As normal, the material for the podcast is drawn from blog posts on Free Movement. This month I start by saying a little bit about the new Immigration Act before...
The Home Office has updated its statistics on the number of families with pending applications separated by the £18,600 minimum income threshold for spouses. At the end of December 2013 it was 3,014. At the end of March it stood at 3,641. That is a LOT of separated families and...
R (on the application of NS & others) v SSHD [2014] EWHC 1971 (Admin) The challenge was primarily to the presumption of “no recourse to public funds” which was inserted into the Immigration Rules at Appendix FM paragraph D-LTRPT 1.2 in December 2012. The argument applies equally to paragraph 276BE....
Having been overruled by the Court of Appeal in the case of Rodriguez [2014] EWCA Civ 2 (FM post here), Mr Justice McCloskey, President of the Immigration and Asylum Chamber of the Upper Tribunal, has returned to the vexed issue of ‘evidential flexibility’ in a trio of cases: Durrani (Entrepreneurs:...
So, the Home Office was doing such a bad job of immigration control that it decided to outsource its responsibilities to employers, then universities, then doctors and now, under the Immigration Act 2014, private citizen landlords. But the same Home Office is surprised and horrified that these institutions are no...
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...Haleemudeen on remittal to UT: SoS conceded Edgehill applied, no need for deference to post-July 2012 and found disproportionate on Art 8 — Mansfield Chambers (@MansfieldImm) June 20, 2014 Free Movement write up and prediction here. And an update from Paul Richardson, Counsel for Mr Haleemudeen:
...Just a quick one to flag up a new report by Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration John Vine into the European Casework Directorate at the Home Office. The report is generally quite positive but the emphasis of the press release, introductory text and subsequent press reports is on potentially...
Court of Justice of the European Union in Saint Prix v UK (Case C‑507/12): Article 45 TFEU must be interpreted as meaning that a woman who gives up work, or seeking work, because of the physical constraints of the late stages of pregnancy and the aftermath of childbirth retains the...
In the past eighteen months Migrant Legal Project (MLP) has represented a number of Vietnamese minors on remand or serving Detention and Training Orders at Young Offender Institutes. All had been picked up for criminal offences relating to cannabis cultivation. Forced labour for cannabis cultivation is the most common form...
Judgment has finally been handed down in the latest test case on Dublin removals to Italy, Tabrizagh and others v SSHD [2014] EWHC 1914 (Admin) and although it is on any view bad news, there is much in it to consider. In a carefully reasoned and frankly impressive decision the...
Just a note to say that the search engine powering searches on Free Movement has been upgraded. Search results should be improved. Searches for multiple words are ‘AND’ by default but you can override by specifying ‘OR’ instead. There is an ever increasing amount of content, particularly with the new...
The case of Rodriguez, Mandalia and Patel [2014] EWCA Civ 2 is to be reconsidered by the Supreme Court, this months grants of permission reveals. The case concerns the ‘evidential flexibility’ policy that I think was first publicly revealed here on Free Movement. It is a chance for the Supreme...
Last year, in 2013, the Home Office launched its #beatthepeak campaign to warn holidaymakers to apply early for passports. In the space of a year we’ve gone from a social media campaign showing smoothly oiled machines churning out shiny new passports by the second to leaked photos showing the applications...
In the fine case of Fetle (Partners: two year requirement) [2014] UKUT 00267 (IAC) the Upper Tribunal holds that the requirement in paragraph 352AA for partners of refugees seeking entry clearance for living together in a relationship akin to either a marriage or a civil partnership which has subsisted for...
The Tribunal Procedure (Upper Tribunal) Rules 2008 are to be amended from 30 June 2014 to ensure that one party to proceedings gets notice before the other and indeed is responsible for serving the other party. Because the proceedings are immigration ones involving asylum seekers, the obvious bias in treatment...
A new Statement of Changes to the Immigration Rules (HC 198) corrects an earlier botched attempt to change the rules by fiat and remove discredited Educational Testing Services (ETS) as providers of the English language test needed for many modern immigration applications. ETS was the subject of a BBC Panorama...
The first of these is a useful short case that came out while I was away called Shen (Paper appeals; proving dishonesty) [2014] UKUT 236 (IAC). It is another example of an applicant with a driving conviction who ticked the ‘no’ box to the question about previous convictions standard on...
This post has been contributed by, Vijay Jagadesham, who represented the College in Global Vision College Ltd v SSHD[2014] EWCA Civ 659. Readers would be forgiven for thinking that this question was clearly answered by the Supreme Court in the case of Alvi v SSHD [2012] 1 WLR 2208, and...
[Update: May 2014 update CPD course now available for members] Welcome to the May 2014 edition of the Free Movement immigration update podcast. First of all, let me say thank you for listening. There have been nearly 10,000 podcast downloads so far, which is very surprising and encouraging. Do let...
Home Office appeals against first instance judge decisions used to be very rare indeed. Some years ago, it apparently became standard practice to seek permission to appeal in some asylum allowed appeals and all or virtually all deportations cases. It now appears to be standard practice for the Home Office...
