Jobs that British employers struggle to recruit for are on the Shortage Occupation List. With separate entries for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, it seeks to be responsive to the needs of industry across the devolved nations. The Migration Advisory Committee advises the UK government on which roles should...
The Senior President of Tribunals has appointed six new immigration judges since we last checked in on recruitment: Abdullah Khurram, 39, immigration and criminal defence solicitor Rachel Galloway, 39, barrister formerly at Kings Chambers in Manchester Christopher Lester, 46, solicitor turned barrister with the Crown Prosecution Service Dawn Hyland, 50,...
A costs judge has backed a leading firm of solicitors in its dispute with a former client over a £194,000 bill for work on her asylum case. The judgment is Farrer & Co LLP v Yertayeva [2021] EWHC B16 (Costs). Ms Yertayeva is a Kazakhstani businesswoman, described by the judge...
The Home Office has published a new policy on Medical evidence in asylum claims. For years there had been policy on medico-legal reports from the Helen Bamber Foundation and Freedom from Torture. There was also a much scrappier policy on medical evidence not from those medical foundations. This new August...
Selami Cokaj describes himself on LinkedIn as “a shrewd businessman, with a killer instinct”. It is an unfortunate turn of phrase: before moving to the UK in 1997, Mr Cokaj was convicted of murder in his native Albania. His unsuccessful human rights appeal against removal from the UK was decided...
Sending asylum seekers to have their claims processed “offshore” as a deterrent to boat arrivals doesn’t work, according to Australian experts examining their own country’s experience. A policy briefing by the Kaldor Centre at the University of New South Wales, published last week, warns other countries of the “failure of...
In Chowdhury v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2021] EWCA Civ 1220, the Court of Appeal has confirmed that where an extended family member applies for an EEA residency card, their period of dependency on their EEA citizen sponsor must have not have been broken up by periods...
The ripple effects of Paposhvili v Belgium [2016] ECHR 1113 continue to be felt at the boundary of Article 3 ECHR. In the first reported decision of its kind, the Upper Tribunal has found that the “modified” (for which, read “lowered”) test for Article 3 breach in medical treatment cases...
Like many refugee lawyers I have watched in horror as the Taliban, taking their cue from the US troop withdrawal, have swept through Afghanistan. At time of writing, it has been confirmed that the Taliban have taken most of the country, including the major cities of Kandahar, Mazhar-Al-Sharif, Herat and...
Welcome to episode 91 of the Free Movement immigration update podcast. This month we begin with a Supreme Court decision on deportation and some developments on immigration judicial reviews. We then move to business immigration, where a new type of visa has just been announced, and then off in the...
ZV (Lithuania) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2021] EWCA Civ 1196 is an important case about the admissibility of asylum claims made by EU citizens. There is a long-standing rule that asylum claims by EU nationals will only be considered in exceptional circumstances. It is presently contained...
A Jamaican man who has been in the UK for over 20 years must be deported, the Court of Appeal has confirmed. The court held that Logan Reid, 51, had not established that his deportation would be “unduly harsh” on his teenage son, given the child’s otherwise stable home life....
I’m a partner at Fragomen and we work in every bit of immigration, other than asylum. That means helping skilled people, entrepreneurs, families and others move to or stay in the UK, including pro bono support for vulnerable people who can’t afford a lawyer. It also means keeping people and...
EU citizens and their families who apply late to the EU Settlement Scheme will have their day-to-day rights protected while that application is considered, the Home Office has announced. The U-turn came in a press release on Friday evening, which says: While the numbers applying late [i.e. after 30 June...
In Hydar (s 120 response; s 85 “new matter”: Birch) [2021] UKUT 176 (IAC), the Upper Tribunal has done an unwilling U-turn on the earlier case of Birch (precariousness and mistake; new matters) [2020] UKUT 86 (IAC). Raising “new matters” in an appeal requires the consent of the Home Office...
Some nice news for a Friday: in response to Steve Richard’s article on Wednesday drawing attention to problems with certificate of sponsorship allocations, the Home Office now seems to be offering a solution. To recap, some businesses that assign certificates of sponsorship to workers from overseas have seen their annual...
In April 2021 the High Court held that Her Majesty’s Passport Office was wrong to insist on signed consent for child passports from an abusive father overseas. That judgment has now been robustly upheld by the Court of Appeal following a disastrous appeal by the Passport Office: Secretary of State...
On 20 July 2021, Free Movement published an article about the UK’s new Displaced Talent Mobility Programme, which concluded that it constituted “a new complementary pathway” for refugees to reach the country and “a positive step that will hopefully encourage other countries to do the same”. The purpose of this...
In paragraph 121 of the Supreme Court’s decision in G v G [2021] UKSC 9, decided in March 2021, Lord Stephens held: a child named as a dependant on the parent’s asylum application and who has not made a separate request for international protection generally can and should be understood...
In R (HNA) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2021] EWHC 2100 (Admin), the High Court has rejected an argument that the UK’s refugee resettlement efforts discriminate against Christians in the Middle East. The claimant HNA is a former Muslim convert to Christianity who fled Syria for Lebanon...
Since the announcement of the new High Potential Individual route as part of the UK Innovation Strategy, there’s been considerable buzz about what it will mean for graduates around the world seeking to move to the UK. Until the new route is mapped out in a statement of changes to...
It’s been a very long time since most UK live music and theatre “sponsors” have had to issue paperwork for overseas artists to come into the UK. For most, it’s been 16 months and counting. Since then, we’ve had Brexit, dragging EU acts into the same category as US, Australian,...
Professional Support Lawyer – Immigration (Unaccompanied Asylum-Seeking Children and Refugees) East Midlands Strategic Migration Partnership (EMSMP) Grade J £45,859 (annual pay increase pending) 37 hours per week Fixed term: two years (with potential extension subject to confirmation of funding) Secondment considered This is an exciting opportunity to provide leadership and...
A few years ago we reported on new regulations allowing the Home Office to give someone notice that their British citizenship was being taken away by email — or by simply placing a letter on file. In R (D4) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2021] EWHC 2179...
The Home Office has been found in breach of its legal duty to protect HIV patients in its custody after officials left a Congolese man without his daily medication for several days. In what Mr Justice Bourne described as an “unedifying” spectacle, senior civil servants were unable to tell the...
The Supreme Court has upheld the policy of treating asylum seekers who claim to be children as adults if two Home Office officials think that the person looks significantly over 18. The case is R (BF (Eritrea)) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2021] UKSC 38. It should...
Both the editor and deputy editor are away on holiday during the week beginning 26 July 2021, so the website will go quiet for one week. We’ll be back up and running on Monday 2 August. Free Movement’s administrator will be on hand to support members with any issues logging...
“High potential individuals” will in future be able to come to the UK to work without a job offer, the government has announced. The move, building on previous promises to provide an unsponsored work route under the Points Based Immigration System for business visas, comes as part of the UK...
The charity Migrants Organise has arranged a Zoom seminar on dealing with complex mental health issues in immigration and asylum cases. It takes place on 29 July 2021 at 5pm; the keynote speaker is Helen Rimington, a senior immigration judge at the Upper Tribunal. Register here. For an introduction to...
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...
