In a decision that forced me to google Pericles (an ancient Greek politician) and Santayana (a Spanish-American philosopher) the First-tier Tribunal (General Regulatory Chamber) has allowed an appeal relating to the Home Office’s refusal to disclose the report on “The Historical Roots of the Windrush Scandal”. This is the second...
The latest “what could possibly go wrong” in the roll out of eVisas is that the Home Office has (I think) without notice announced that they will no longer be replacing lost or stolen biometric residence permits. If someone has lost their BRP or if it has been stolen, the...
The Home Office has reluctantly published a fascinating independent review of the racism underpinning immigration legislation, focussing on the period 1950 to 1981. The report is described as “an accessible explainer on how race and immigration policy came to be so closely entwined in the political history of the UK”....
Over the summer, the Home Office published Border Force guidance explaining how those with status under the EU Settlement Scheme (EUSS) should be treated when entering the UK. The guidance also addresses pending EUSS applications and those who may be eligible but have yet to submit an EUSS application (late...
In Adegboyega v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2024] EWHC 2365 (KB), the High Court has awarded £203,995 to a victim of the abuse at Brook House immigration removal centre. The judgment is a vindication of the bravery of detainees who came forward to participate and give evidence...
Welcome to the weekly Free Movement newsletter! Issues around the EU Settlement Scheme continue to make news, with the latest being the story of a Polish man who the Home Office was trying to remove despite his having lived here for 20 years and having applied twice to the EUSS. We are one year...
We often get questions about how to become an OISC adviser so we have compiled all the essential information in one place for you. The first thing to say is that if you are looking to provide immigration advice but are not legally qualified, you will need to get registered...
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The report into the Rwanda country policy and information notes by the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration has finally been published. The Rwanda scheme may be over, and the relevant country notes withdrawn shortly after the Supreme Court’s decision but as I pointed out last week, there are...
Making a mistake on an immigration application form can be disastrous. If the mistake is interpreted by officials as an attempt to mislead or deceive, the application may be refused and can also lead to a ten-year ban on re-entry to the UK. Following a Court of Appeal decision that...
The Home Secretary commissioned the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) on 6 August 2024 to begin investigating the use of international recruitment and immigration in particular sectors, starting with the information technology, telecommunications and engineering sectors, which are in the top 10 sectors that have been reliant on international recruitment. The...
A new commentary by Asylos, in partnership with Rainbow Migration, has considered the Home Office’s country policy and information note on sexual orientation and gender identity and expression in Georgia and identified various assertions on risk that are inconsistent with or unsupported by the country evidence elsewhere in the note....
Welcome to the weekly Free Movement newsletter! Another eight people died in the Channel over the weekend while trying to come to the UK. The government continues to focus on securitisation alone, as a new Border Security Commander is announced and the prime minister seems to believe that there is something useful to...
In this post I explain the variety of reasons that it is a very bad idea to submit a fee waiver application purely for the purpose of getting section 3C leave, with no eligibility for or intention of making the subsequent immigration application mentioned in the fee waiver application. The...
An applicant has successfully challenged the Home Office’s refusal of his application for further leave to remain in the old Tier 1 (Entrepreneur) route after obvious errors were made both procedurally and in the refusal letter. The case is R (on the application of Ghadam) v Secretary of State for...
The 2024 edition of the Administrative Court’s guide on judicial reviews has been published: It includes guidance on: The guide also has contact details for the court and information on forms and fees and is essential reading for anyone who does this work, there is also an annex on judicial...
Biometric residence permits (BRPs), all issued with expiry dates no later than the end of December 2024, are being replaced with “eVisas“. To get their eVisa, people need to register and set up an online account (see our step by step guide for help with this) so that they can...
This summer, a legal challenge against the ten year route to settlement became a national media story. When Nelson Shardey spoke out about the pain of being told he didn’t have any lawful status after 45 years in the UK, his story touched the nation. In this post, solicitor Nicola...
Following the new Office of the Immigration Services Commissioner Code of Standards for regulated immigration advisers going live on 1 September 2024, the OISC has published an accompanying practice note on how immigration advisers need to show they are competent. Unhelpfully, it’s towards the bottom of this page and it...
If a migrant makes a valid application to extend their leave (permission) to be in the UK before it expires, their existing leave will be rolled over until a decision has been made on the application, even if this is after the original expiry date. This is commonly known as...
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Welcome to the weekly Free Movement newsletter! Following last week’s disaster in the Channel in which six children and a pregnant woman were among the dozen who lost their lives, everyone should read this article by a Syrian refugee in the UK highlighting the problems with the government’s approach to...
The government has just commissioned a review of the spouse minimum income requirement by the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC). This was set at £18,600 in 2012, increased to £29,000 in April 2024 and was scheduled by the last government to rise to £34,500 then eventually £38,700. By comparison, the minimum...
The autumn statement of changes HC 217 has been published, accompanied by a written statement from Seema Malhotra MP, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Migration and Citizenship. The errors we covered last week in relation to skilled worker going rates are being corrected from 8 October 2024 and we...
It is really important that people are aware of the need to be regulated if they are providing immigration advice and services, in order to avoid committing a criminal offence. Big changes at the Home Office’s end often cause confusion among advisers where updated guidance is not publicly available, the...
In April this year, the government introduced significant increases to the qualifying salary rates for the skilled worker and global business mobility routes. While employers and potential employees grapple with how the new salary thresholds and ‘going rate’ percentiles affect new hires as compared to extensions in the same role,...
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Barry joins Sonia again this month to look back at what happened in August. We cover the latest statistics on asylum, immigration and trafficking. There are a couple of cases relating to asylum family reunion, as well as a policy change for those separated during Operation Pitting. Other cases covered...
The immigration rules permit a parent living overseas, who has British or settled children living in the UK, to apply for a visa to come to live with them. In this post we will consider the requirements that a parent applying for a visa in this category must meet in...
The Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman has published “Spotlight on the Windrush Compensation Scheme: your stories, your rights” and said that the scheme has been “wrongly denying compensation to people who should have received it”. The Windrush compensation scheme was set up in 2019 and it seems complaints quickly followed,...
The roll out of eVisas is likely to have the biggest adverse impact on those people who hold a “legacy” document, i.e. evidence of their immigration status that was issued before the introduction of biometric residence permits. One of the reasons for this is that there is an additional step...
The Home Office often makes mistakes when exercising its immigration powers. The high appeal success rates bear testimony to this: as many as 50% of some categories of appeal are allowed. However, there are only some limited circumstances where it is possible to extract compensation from the Home Office by...
Welcome to the weekly Free Movement newsletter! David Bolt, the interim Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration, recentlly published an update on the team’s work. There are two reports currently with the Home Secretary awaiting publication, those are the Country of Origin information report on Rwanda which was sent to her on 16...
The Home Office has confirmed via a notification on the sponsorship management system that some salary going rates (i.e. the salary requirements specific to those occupations eligible for sponsorship under the Skilled Worker route) included in March 2024 statement of changes to the immigration rules HC 590 were incorrectly stated...
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...The Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration has published its annual report summarising the department’s activities over the period 1 April 2023 to 31 March 2024. All 21 inspection reports published during this period were submitted by the previous inspector David Neal, who was in post until 20 February...
Anecdotal evidence of a recent increase in Afghan asylum refusals, along with publication of two updated country policy and information notes suggests that the Home Office has changed its approach to those who have come to the UK from Afghanistan and sought protection. Background I wrote previously about the history...
A year after the Brook House Inquiry published its report, the Independent Monitoring Board has published its annual report on the Gatwick detention centres (Brook House and Tinsley House) finding that safety has deteriorated in the past year. The report noted “a substantial increase in violence across both centres in...
The Commissioner of the British Indian Ocean Territory has unsuccessfully appealed a grant of bail allowing the small group of people seeking asylum on Diego Garcia to access certain parts of the island. The case is The Commissioner v The King (on the application of VT & Ors) (No. 3)...
Often corporate immigration advice can feel as though it boils down to Skilled Worker applications and little else. In amongst that “little else” is the UK Expansion Worker route, which came in to replace the sole representative route. We already have a briefing on how to apply under this route and...
