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Me: Any idea how long the first case on the list might take? Usher: Shouldn’t be long, there’s no lawyer for that one.

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25th February 2014
BY Colin Yeo

The fourth part in the Migrant Journey research series was recently released by the Home Office. It examines what happened to non EEA migrants who entered the UK by various lawful means in 2007. A few random snippets of facts I thought were interesting:

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24th February 2014
BY Colin Yeo

So says the tribunal in MD (same-sex oriented males: risk) India CG [2014] UKUT 65 (IAC), anyway. And even if there was risk in the home area, the tribunal considers that relocation within India is generally reasonable and “LGBT support organisations” can provide help going underground if need be (para...

21st February 2014
BY Colin Yeo

The Home Office have started giving directions for the removal of failed asylum seekers to Mogadishu on Turkish Airline flights via Istanbul. Anyone given such removal directions might ask the Home Office to reconsider whether they risk violating their human rights in the light of the announcement by Al Shabaab...

21st February 2014
BY Free Movement

Polite suggestions in the comments, please. Via @legalchap and @MBEGriffiths.

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20th February 2014
BY Colin Yeo

For we tribunal watchers the list is notably short. Judicial ambitions to categorise, measure and risk assess the entire world have been scaled back, perhaps because of the impossibility of the task but more likely because resources are being absorbed by the transfer of judicial review into the Upper Tribunal....

20th February 2014
BY Colin Yeo

Any asylum practitioner is likely to come across cases where, rather than investigate the merits of an asylum claim, the Home Office seeks to return their client to a third country elsewhere in the European Union deemed under the Dublin II Regulation to have prior responsibility for assessing the claim,...

19th February 2014
BY Mark Symes

We know from history that organised and persecutory regimes do document their own human rights abuses. Unusual to see such documents emerge while current, though.

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18th February 2014
BY Colin Yeo

Around 3,000 couples in England and Wales will tie the knot tomorrow (Saturday 15 February). According to a Home Office guestimate between 48 and 123 of these marriages will be ‘sham’, which is to say they will not be ‘genuine and subsisting’ as required by UK Immigration Rules. But what...

14th February 2014
BY Natasha Carver

[UPDATE: blog post on how the hearing went here] The hearing of the test case challenge to the spouse minimum income rules is approaching and the team behind the challenge seek information about how decisions are being handled at the moment by Entry Clearance Officers on the ground. We would...

13th February 2014
BY Navi Ahluwalia

There has now been a fairly substantial series of Court of Appeal judgments on the issue of costs orders in an immigration litigation context. These also have wider significance for other public law cases, but immigration law is currently dominating public law litigation, at least by volume, as this widely...

12th February 2014
BY Colin Yeo

Reading through the Home Office’s response to a recent Home Affairs Select Committee, this jumped out at me: The Home Office does not permit caseworkers to ask prurient questions about sexual matters or require applicants to produce sexually explicit material in support of their claim. This is somewhat questionable given...

11th February 2014
BY Colin Yeo

You might be forgiven for thinking that when the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has already recognised an individual’s status as a refugee, national decision-makers would ordinarily follow suit. After all, UNHCR has unmatched expertise in refugee status determinations, and its determinations are normally made closer in time and...

10th February 2014
BY Richard Reynolds

You saw it here first!

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9th February 2014
BY Colin Yeo

Immigration Minister Mark Harper has resigned from the Government because in 2007 he employed a cleaner who did not have permission to work. Harper claims that he has not broken the law but is resigning because “I should hold myself to a higher standard than expected of others”. The first...

8th February 2014
BY Colin Yeo

A Home Office spokesman said: “Staff who make exceptional contributions to the work of the Home Office are eligible for special one-off payments” Apparently a total of 11,672 bonuses were paid in 2012/13 to around 40% of staff, equating to a mean bonus of £559. Who knew that 40% of...

5th February 2014
BY Colin Yeo

A new report from Women For Refugee Women (‘WFRW’) sheds a sickening light on the conditions for women asylum seekers detained in Yarl’s Wood IRC. 70 per cent of the women they interviewed that were guarded by men said that the very presence of male staff made them feel uncomfortable....

3rd February 2014
BY Jo Wilding

"Citizenship is a privilege not a right." So say both Judge Dredd and Immigration Minister Mark Harper. As has been pointed out, the UK government is now literally getting its immigration policy from Judge Dredd.

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1st February 2014
BY Colin Yeo

Only yesterday, the day before the debate on the third reading of her Immigration Bill, the Home Secretary published a proposed amendment to the Bill whereby she will be able to deprive a person of British citizenship acquired by naturalisation even if by doing so she will render the person...

30th January 2014
BY Ronan Toal

In one of the earliest cases of the year, Secretary of State for the Home Department v Rodriguez [2014] EWCA Civ 2, the Court of Appeal has overturned the decision of the Upper Tribunal under the new president McCloskey J, Rodriguez (Flexibility Policy) [2013] UKUT 00042 (IAC).

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29th January 2014
BY Sonali Naik

Routine, repeated delay in providing Acknowledgements of Service by the Home Office in judicial review cases reached such a pitch in 2013 that the court held a hearing into the matter (as previously covered on this blog). The Home Office blamed a rise in the number of claims, though from...

28th January 2014
BY James Packer

In a new judgment in the case of Reyes v Sweden [2014] EUECJ C-423/12 (BAILII link) the Court of Justice of the European Union has addressed the question of whether a dependent family member must be involuntarily dependent in order to qualify for free movement rights and how far a...

27th January 2014
BY Colin Yeo

The following questions are transcribed from the interviewer’s written record of an interview with a detained asylum seeker who stated he was bisexual. The interview took place in October 2013, beginning at 10.25am and ending at 4pm. There was a one hour break for lunch. No lawyer was present at...

24th January 2014
BY Colin Yeo

This determination was quietly released by the Judicial Office late last year. It is unusual for immigration cases to be publicised in this way. Presumably in this instance it was because of likely public interest in the final outcome rather than the procedural issues arising. It does seem to me,...

22nd January 2014
BY Colin Yeo

Slight update to the blog software today. The layout should respond better to different devices and screen or browser window sizes. Let me know if you spot any problems anywhere, including the forums.

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22nd January 2014
BY Colin Yeo

When an EU citizen breaks the law of another member state, fundamental questions arise. How should European states treat EU nationals and their family members who have committed crimes? How can the principles of free movement and integration, which are central to the idea of the European Union, be balanced...

20th January 2014
BY Leonie Hirst

Actress and justice campaigner Joanna Lumley has joined her voice to the rising chorus of concern about the catastrophic changes to Legal Aid. She adds her name, forever associated with the legally aided fight for the rights of Gurkhas (not to mention Ab Fab, James Bond and the New Avengers),...

17th January 2014
BY Free Movement

Largely unnoticed by many, on 1 January 2014 a new legal regime entered force regarding the allocation of responsibility for considering asylum claims from persons who have entered the country from elsewhere in the European Union: Regulation (EU) No 604/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26...

16th January 2014
BY Mark Symes

Just a short one to observe that the Afghan atheist case is a truly great result. I haven’t myself heard of a case of an atheist getting asylum on that ground before. It is also fantastic to see the students at the Kent Law Clinic getting such a good outcome....

14th January 2014
BY Colin Yeo

This is a very short survey to gather information for a possible legal challenge to the Home Office practice of withdrawing decisions late in the day and perhaps to the tribunal procedure rules, which provide for automatic termination of the appeal. We are very grateful for your time. Any responses...

14th January 2014
BY Colin Yeo

New rules restricting access to welfare benefits for new EU migrants including a six month statutory presumption for benefits paid to jobseekers. In this post Garden Court Chambers barrister Desmond Rutledge looks at how we got here, what are the new rules and what might follow next.

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13th January 2014
BY Desmond Rutledge

An important recent case slipped under my radar last year, mainly because it has not been publicly reported on one of the publicly accessible case law repositories like BAILII. The case is R (on the application of Jasbir Singh) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2013] EWHC 2873...

9th January 2014
BY Colin Yeo

There are three courts at Richmond Mags being used for immigration hearings now but all five will apparently be used for immigration hearings from April. Meanwhile, the family court at Richmond is apparently moving to Hatton Cross, which has been seriously underused for immigration cases in recent months despite the...

9th January 2014
BY Free Movement

It is sad when a judge tasked with deciding whether a British pensioner should live out his last days with his wife or without comments that this was a very run of the mill case Maybe for the judge. In which case the judge should consider his or her position...

8th January 2014
BY Colin Yeo

It is well known that those who have been granted leave to remain (LTR) in the United Kingdom but who have a ‘no recourse to public funds’ condition attached to their leave (including those who have applied under Appendix FM of the Immigration Rules) would be in breach of that...

7th January 2014
BY Desmond Rutledge

If Britain gets our taxpayers, shouldn’t it also pay their benefits? Why should Polish taxpayers subsidize British taxpayers’ children?

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6th January 2014
BY Colin Yeo
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