It’s not the most damning part of yesterday’s inspection report on the asylum seeker camp at Napier barracks, but it’s certainly the most ironic. Some of the staff charged with running the camp were themselves migrants working in breach of their visa conditions, according to the Independent Chief Inspector of...
Regulation 9 of The National Health Service (Charges to Overseas Visitors) Regulations 2015 provides that the NHS in England cannot charge overseas visitors for treating a condition caused by torture, female genital mutilation, domestic violence or sexual violence. This is provided the overseas visitor did not travel to the UK...
The Nationality and Borders Bill 2021 looks set to sail through Parliament, passing its second reading stage in the House of Commons this week by 101 votes. The headline provisions of the Bill are by now well known — indeed, notorious — so we’re not going to spend this episode...
The Judicial Review and Courts Bill 2021, published yesterday, will mostly abolish the right of migrants to apply to the High Court to have an appeal reopened if rejected by both chambers of the immigration tribunal. This is the process known to lawyers as a Cart or Eba judicial review....
The Home Office has rebuffed Public Law Project’s (PLP) latest attempt to find out more about the secret algorithmic criteria used to decide whether a proposed marriage should be investigated as a “sham”. Sham marriage investigations can be invasive and unpleasant and it appears that they are targeted at some...
When it rains, it pours, and it has been pouring ten-year long residence cases. Here’s what we learned in just the last year: The difference between “book-ended” and “open-ended” overstaying (and that “book-ended” overstaying does not break continuous lawful residence) The maximum number of absences that someone can accrue over...
The UK’s immigration removal centres did reasonably well during the coronavirus pandemic, the prisons inspector has found. The annual report of HM Inspectorate of Prisons, the remit of which includes removal centres, is broadly positive about the four locations visited in 2020/21. The number of people detained fell sharply, which...
I am announcing that those displaced by conflict and violence will now also be able to benefit from access to our global points-based immigration system. To enable skilled displaced people who have had to flee their homes to come to the UK safely and legally through established routes. We will...
Further to Sarah’s discussion of age assessments elsewhere on the site today, a quick note that the Welsh government recently published a “toolkit” for social workers carrying out such assessments on behalf of councils in that jurisdiction. The document contains: best practice a range of important and contextual information, and...
We round off our coverage of the Nationality and Borders Bill, the second reading of which continues today, with Part 5. This consists of eight “miscellaneous” clauses. Four of them are what the House of Commons Library describes as “placeholder” clauses which will be fleshed out by government amendment as...
In another reminder that leave obtained by deception can be revoked, we have the Upper Tribunal decision in R (Matusha) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (revocation of ILR policy) [2021] UKUT 175 (IAC). The case confirms that there “must be clear and justifiable evidence of deception and...
Part 4 of the Nationality and Borders Bill addresses modern slavery and human trafficking. The Home Office’s goals for reform in this area are, as ever, focused on criminality. The Home Secretary has promised that the Bill will “break the business model” of trafficking networks (and therefore save lives), ensure...
In Sanambar v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2021] UKSC 2 the Supreme Court has dismissed the appeal against deportation of an Iranian citizen who arrived in the United Kingdom aged nine in 2005. He had committed several knifepoint robberies as a teenager, between the ages of 14...
Settled has vacancies for 2 immigration advisers interested in setting up new services for EU citizens in Scotland and North West England. The deadline for applications to the EU Settlement Scheme has just passed — now the real work begins! Late applications, refused applications, requests for family members to join,...
The Court of Justice of the European Union has held that refusing Universal Credit to EU citizens with pre-settled status is justified so long as there is no risk of breaching fundamental rights under the EU Charter. The case is C-709/20 CG v Department for Communities in Northern Ireland. This...
Under the sub-heading “Interpretation of Refugee Convention“, clauses 27-35 of the Nationality and Borders Bill 2021 seek to accomplish four main tasks: Translate some EU asylum law, currently residing in secondary legislation, into primary legislation. Turn back the clock on core principles of asylum law in relation to the identification...
MPs will give the Nationality and Borders Bill 2021 its second reading on 19 July. One of the Bill’s main objectives is to make the asylum system “fairer and more effective”. Most of the clauses supposedly directed to that purpose are in Part 2 of the text, making it the...
The Oxford Handbook of International Refugee Law, edited by Cathryn Costello, Michelle Foster and Jane McAdam and published in June 2021, is a massive book in every sense. Some five years in the making, running to 1,258 pages, consisting of 65 chapters, all by different authors (and sometimes multiple authors),...
The Upper Tribunal can consider late acknowledgments of service from the Home Office when deciding whether to grant permission for judicial review proceedings, the Court of Appeal has ruled in R (KA) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2021] EWCA Civ 1040. Issues in the case The first...
Part 3 of the Nationality and Borders Bill 2021 includes provisions relating to immigration offences and enforcement. It criminalises arriving in the UK, as well as formally entering, making it almost impossible to claim asylum in the UK without first committing a criminal offence. People helping asylum seekers get to...
The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that forcing sponsors to wait for a minimum of three years before applying for family reunification without an individualised assessment of the family’s circumstances violates Article 8 of the human rights convention. The case is MA v Denmark (application no. 6697/18). MA...
Half of all Tier 1 (Investor) visas ever issued are being reviewed on national security grounds, according to an anti-corruption charity. A new briefing by Spotlight on Corruption says that over 6,300 Investor visa grants between 2008 and 2015 — half the total issued to date — “are being reviewed...
We covered the nationality portion of the New Plan for Immigration in an earlier article. Many of those proposals, largely concerning British Overseas Territories citizens and the Windrush generation, were notably less cruel and unusual than the other aspects of the New Plan, and might even have been described as...
UK Migration Lawyers is excited to be seeking two immigration caseworkers to join its Birmingham based team. We are seeking candidates with strong immigration law experience who are passionate, driven, organised, self-motivated and who want to show their abilities in this fast paced and challenging environment. This position is an...
We’re late to this judgment, published on the same day as the Borders Bill, but it’s already been well covered by Matrix Chambers and The Guardian. The latter’s headline: Judge tells Priti Patel to bring asylum seeker back to UK. The case is AA (Sudan) v Secretary of State for...
Welcome to episode 90 of the Free Movement immigration update podcast. We’re covering June 2021, which feels a little unreal given the Nationality and Borders Bill had landed shortly before we were due to record. But life goes on, and we’ve got a few points about the EU Settlement Scheme...
Assisting migrants who lack mental capacity to instruct a lawyer, or whose capacity fluctuates, can pose challenges. Without having clear instructions on a person’s immigration history and what they would like to do, it can often be impossible to provide legal advice and representation. Law Society guidance is also clear...
Yesterday’s Nationality and Borders Bill gives legislative expression to a set of government policies branded “New Plan for Immigration”. A consultation on the New Plan for Immigration ran from 24 March to 6 May 2021. There was a huge response: the House of Commons Library has catalogued 42 organisational submissions,...
The Court of Session in Scotland and the High Court in England and Wales have both ruled that newly recognised refugees have a right to claim backdated child tax credit. The cases are Adnan, Petitioners [2021] CSOH 63 and R (DK) v Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs [2021] EWHC 1845...
Imagine that you are – for the sake of argument – involved in a democracy movement in a post-Soviet dictatorship. Recently the police picked you up, beat the hell out of you and assaulted you in ways you’d rather not dwell on. Then they booted you out of the police...
The much-hyped Nationality and Borders Bill is here. It mainly addresses asylum issues but there are some nationality provisions included as well, which we have already covered and will return to in another article soon. My first impressions, reading through the Bill, are that A lot of it is already...
Hundreds of refugee children denied reunion with family in the UK may be able to challenge that decision following a ruling that Home Office policy on “Dublin III” transfers is in part unlawful. The case is R (Safe Passage International) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2021] EWHC...
“Illegal immigration to be turned into a criminal offence in landmark borders bill”, the Sunday Express reports. The idea that unauthorised immigration is insufficiently criminalised will surprise legislators who have spent much of the past two decades piling dozens and dozens of new immigration offences onto the statute books. “Illegal...
Lawyer £28,000 – 34,000 per annum (depending on experience) Permanent, Full-Time (37.5 hrs per week) OR part-time 80% FTE Member of the UK Legal and Arrivals Team London office (currently working remotely due to Covid-19 restrictions) Reporting to Head of UK Legal and Arrivals Line Management Responsibilities: N/A Safe Passage...
On 1 July 2021, the British Nationality Act 1981 (Immigration Rules Appendix EU) (Amendment) Regulations 2021 (SI 2021 No. 743) introduced a new section 10A to the British Nationality Act 1981. This new section is aimed at ensuring that certain children born from 1 July 2021 onwards will automatically acquire...
The protection afforded to children who are long-term UK residents has been further diluted in a new Court of Appeal decision, NA (Bangladesh) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2021] EWCA Civ 953. The judgment is the latest in a line of cases to grapple with what exactly...
Non-EU citizens can potentially have a deportation order against them revoked where they have acquired or could acquire rights as family members of EU nationals. Such opportunities will continue to be relevant to a specific group of people for some years to come. This post will try to unravel this...
When the Home Office want to deport an EU citizen who has committed a criminal offence it adopts a two-stage process. First it issues a Deportation Liability Notice (DLN). This lets the person know that the Home Office is considering deportation and invites representations. The second stage is issuing the...
The Court of Appeal has ruled that an immigration tribunal is not obliged to accept the conclusions of an expert witness. The case of MS (Zimbabwe) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2021] EWCA Civ 941 confirms that a tribunal is required to reach its own conclusions. In...
The Brexit vote, the triggering of Article 50, the failed May deal, the Johnson capitulation, the legal exit at the start of 2020 and the economic exit at the year’s end have all come and gone. On 30 June 2021 comes another milestone: the deadline for EU residents and their...
