An immigration lawyer has been struck off not long after being released from prison for defrauding the Legal Aid Agency of up to £5 million. A disciplinary tribunal found that Astrid Halberstadt-Twum was guilty of “deliberate, calculated and repeated” misconduct in siphoning off what the government says is around £4.75...
White smoke rises from Stormont, where the British and Irish governments have produced a draft deal to bring back power-sharing government in Northern Ireland following lengthy talks with the region’s main political parties. The agreement includes a promise to address the fallout from the DeSouza case. That case confirmed that...
The Office of the Immigration Services Commissioner (OISC) has released guidance for charities accredited to advise on the EU Settlement Scheme only. The light touch accreditation scheme, which allows not-for-profit organisations to give immigration advice limited to the Settlement Scheme without jumping through the usual OISC hoops, was apparently a...
In SB (vulnerable adult: credibility) Ghana [2019] UKUT 398 (IAC) the Upper Tribunal has provided a steer on how immigration judges should approach evidence given by vulnerable adults, in addition to that provided in the Joint Presidential Guidance Note No 2 of 2010. The key point is that adverse credibility...
Recent accounts of Ian’s life have brought more detail of his early years and his robust defence tactics at trial such as those of the Mangrove defendants. Whilst those paying tribute have acknowledged him as the father of British immigration law, little further information has been given about how he achieved...
On 20 December 2019, the Upper Tribunal issued a new country guidance case on Iraq. This new case, SMO, KSP & IM (Article 15(c); identity documents) Iraq CG [2019] UKUT 400 (IAC), replaces all existing country guidance, including AA (Article 15(c)) Iraq CG [2015] UKUT 544 (IAC); BA (Returns to...
The High Court has refused to extend key safeguards under the Adults at Risk policy to immigration detainees held in prisons. In MR (Pakistan) & Anor v Secretary of State for Justice & Ors [2019] EWHC 3567 (Admin), Mr Justice Supperstone decided that healthcare protections for vulnerable detainees on the...
The immigration inspector wants to hear your thoughts on the work of Home Office Presenting Officers (HOPOs) by Friday 10 January. David Bolt writes: In my 2019-20 inspection plan I signalled my intention to carry out an inspection of the work of Home Office Presenting Officers. Presenting Officers are Home Office Civil...
Can an appeal be both finally determined and pending at the same time? This conundrum, akin to Erwin Schrödinger’s famous thought experiment involving a cat in a box with a lethal substance, was tackled by the Upper Tribunal in Niaz (NIAA 2002 s. 104: pending appeal) [2019] UKUT 399 (IAC)....
The Home Office has successfully defended its processing of asylum claims by unaccompanied children despite chronic delays in decision-making. The case is R (MK) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWHC 3573 (Admin). MK was a Sudanese child brought to the UK from Calais in October 2016...
The High Court has rejected a challenge to the NHS charging regulations. In a decision handed down just before Christmas, Mrs Justice Foster found against a Ghanaian woman who was billed £100,000 for her daughter’s life-saving liver transplant. The case is R (Shu & Anor) v Secretary of State for...
By today, most businesses around the country will have reopened following the festive break. With energy levels topped up and a whole new year to embrace, if the business — large or small — hasn’t already done so, now is the time to put Brexit immigration plans into full swing....
The Upper Tribunal clearly has a tough time getting into the holiday spirit. Ejiogu (Cart cases) [2019] UKUT 395 (IAC), reported just before Christmas, is the equivalent of a judicial smack on the hand. It is another reminder of the importance of what the tribunal describes as the “duty of candidness”,...
The UK needs a world class migration system to attract the brightest and the best from across the world… That is why I am so pleased today to be able to publish this points-based system for the UK. – Home Secretary Charles Clarke, March 2006 We will introduce an Australian...
The impact of disclosing information from family proceedings in immigration matters has been in the news of late but the reverse situation rarely arises. One such is the recent case of R v Secretary of State for the Home Department (Disclosure of Asylum Records) [2019] EWHC 3147 (Fam), which explored the...
You would be forgiven for thinking there are some special rights or privileges attached to being a British citizen. Politicians are fond of telling us how great it is to be British and how it is a privilege not a right. Our government charges foreign nationals a small fortune to...
The Upper Tribunal has confirmed that it is for asylum seekers to disprove the possibility of safe and reasonable internal relocation if the Home Office identifies a potential safe haven. In MB (Internal relocation – burden of proof) Albania [2019] UKUT 392 (IAC), the Upper Tribunal reconsidered the earlier decision...
Welcome to episode 71 of the Free Movement immigration update podcast. This month we explain the ramifications of the Supreme Court decision in Hemmati as well as recent developments in asylum and trafficking. The DeSouza case on the Good Friday Agreement has been reported by the Upper Tribunal, along with...
In recent years the United Kingdom government has resorted to indirect measures like the hostile environment to force people to leave the UK, alongside directly removing people. The government can then claim that the person left the UK voluntarily, and may have thought that there could be no liability for...
Do you want to help child refugees access safe, legal routes to sanctuary? Do you want to join a ground-breaking, determined and compassionate charity that is leading the fight for child refugees caught in limbo in Europe and elsewhere? Safe Passage is recruiting a Lawyer. This is an exciting opportunity...
The High Court has ruled that charging a citizenship fee of over £1,000 to children is unlawful. The decision will be widely welcomed by campaigners who have long argued that the fee charged to register a child as British, which is set far above the administrative cost of processing applications,...
The Upper Tribunal has shot down a scheme under which people looking for a Tier 1 (Investor) visa would borrow money from one company and invest in a closely related company. In a judicial review against the Home Office for refusing the Tier 1 (Investor) applications of two Chinese citizens...
In all likelihood, the events of last Thursday mean the UK will be exiting the EU on 31 January 2020 with a deal. This means EU law will remain in place during a transitional period at least until 31 December 2020. After this date, either the transitional period is extended...
The Upper Tribunal has rejected an attempt by the Home Office to ignore the clear meaning of an Immigration Rule. Sahebi (Para 352(iii): meaning of “existed”) Pakistan [2019] UKUT 394 (IAC) is about paragraph 352A(iii), which covers reunion for the family members of people who have been granted refugee status...
SR, who is from Iraq but settled in the UK in 2002, wants to become a British citizen. The Home Office does not want to grant him citizenship, accusing SR of holding “extremist Islamic beliefs” and raising concerns about “financial irregularities”. The case came to the Special Immigration Appeals Commission,...
If you haven’t noticed immigrants being blamed for everything from crime to low wages and overstretched public services, you have not been paying attention. In Hostile Environment: How Immigrants Became Scapegoats, the writer, journalist and academic Maya Goodfellow examines how this came to be. In short, decades of immigration policy...
The Conservative Party has won the general election and a mandate for its policy of an “Australian-style points based system” for immigration, whatever that means. The party manifesto leaves readers none the wiser. We can reveal that more details do exist. Last weekend, a rash of media stories emerged stating...
The Court of Appeal has given judgment in Akinyemi v SSHD (No 2) [2019] EWCA Civ 2098, a long-running appeal concerning the deportation of a man who was born in the UK in 1983, and has never left. In reversing (again) the decision of the Upper Tribunal to dismiss Mr...
One fifth of British people have become more relaxed about immigration over the last few years, mainly because of a more “positive narrative” about immigration. Over 20% of people surveyed by the research firm Ipsos MORI have recently become more positive, or less negative, about the impact of immigration, of...
The High Court has declared that the Home Office policy of waiting until an asylum decision is made before considering whether to grant trafficking victims Discretionary Leave to Remain is unlawful. Under that policy, a recognised victim of human trafficking who has claimed asylum might wait months or years for...
In the case of R (Karagul & Ors) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWHC 3208 (Admin), the High Court has found that the Home Office breached the principle of procedural fairness when refusing applications under the Ankara Agreement on the basis of bad faith or dishonesty....
What will the government formed after Thursday’s general election do with the UK immigration system? The three main political parties — those that have been in government before and might be again — have all published manifestos addressing immigration and asylum. Below is a table showing how the manifestos compare...
On a warm summer’s day in late July, five sets of appellant lawyers found themselves in Court 4 of the Upper Tribunal in Field House, huddled together on what could only be characterised as “the naughty step”. Unaware at the start of the day the rationale for the hearings before...
The secretive court that hears immigration and nationality cases with a national security element has hit out at lawyers for failing to follow its rules. A Special Immigration Appeals Commission practice note, published on 4 December, slams the work of immigration lawyers in national security cases as at times “unacceptable”....
In a case that sent me googling the definition and pronunciation of Note Verbale (“a diplomatic communication prepared in the third person and unsigned: less formal than a note but more formal than an aide-mémoire”; pronounced nawt ver-bal), the Court of Appeal has issued a judgment that, at first blush,...
A mentally ill Iranian man who was kept in immigration detention for 838 days in total has secured £100,000 in compensation from the Home Office. The test case concerning a man known as AKE was settled in the High Court today, according to Garden Court Chambers, whose barristers acted in...
