Revised Home Office guidance should make it easier for migrants with family visas to claim benefits if necessary. The change follows a recent High Court decision which John has explained in some detail, along with the wider context of no recourse to public funds (NRPF). As of today, the updated...
Furious legal aid lawyers have taken their dispute with the Ministry of Justice to the next level with a judicial review aimed at reversing forthcoming changes. Duncan Lewis Solicitors have sent a letter before action challenging the payment structure for remote immigration appeals during the pandemic. A new system for...
The sheer surrealism of an immigration lawyer’s job can perhaps only truly be understood by MC Escher’s architect or Salvador Dali’s landscape designer: you do your best to navigate the impossible, but you can’t help being occasionally hit in the face by a massive melting clock. Here are ten of...
The Home Office put just under 300 new people in immigration detention during the coronavirus pandemic, figures released today suggest. Between the start of the UK lockdown on 23 March and the end of April, 295 people entered immigration detention, according to a new statistical report on Covid-19 and the...
The Court of Appeal has rejected a challenge to the £1 an hour rate of pay for detainees who undertake work in immigration removal centres. In R (Badmus) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2020] EWCA Civ 657 the court maintained the decision reached by the High Court...
No recourse to public funds (‘NRPF’) is a condition imposed on the majority of UK visa holders preventing them from claiming benefits. In R (W, A Child By His Litigation Friend J) v Secretary of State for the Home Department & Anor [2020] EWHC 1299, the High Court found the...
The High Court has looked further at when details of an asylum claim can be shared in family proceedings. The judgment in R v Secretary of State for the Home Department (No. 2) [2020] EWHC 1036 (Fam) applies previously established principles to a particular set of circumstances. It follows on...
A High Court judge has granted immigration bail to an Afghan detainee and made findings which will be helpful to those representing other detainees seeking release during the COVID-19 crisis. The short judgment in (R) Khan v SSHD CO/1366/2020 provides an example of how judges should proceed in light of...
Reports by the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration, David Bolt, now follow a familiar pattern. Mr Bolt and his team carry out an inspection of a certain area of Home Office activity. A report on possible areas of improvement is drawn up and sent to the department for...
Last year saw a “significant reduction” in charter flights to remove migrants from the UK, a watchdog reported this week — but those so removed are still physically restrained more often than is necessary. In the latter respect, the 2019 annual report of the Independent Monitoring Boards Charter Flight Monitoring...
Twitter’s political correspondents are abuzz with the news that the government has made its second NHS-and-immigration U-turn in 24 hours: Woah . Big victory for @Keir_Starmer No10 spokesman: pic.twitter.com/AHWInadgUK — Paul Waugh (@paulwaugh) May 21, 2020 A select coterie of journalists tend to get privileged access to such announcements, but...
The DeSouza case raised complex issues of citizenship, identity and implementation of the Good Friday Agreement, but at the heart of the case was an immigration matter and a family who have faced a brutal uphill struggle to live together in the UK, like so many others. Last week, the...
The Upper Tribunal has found that the Home Office’s policy for waiving the immigration application fee for destitute immigrants — the fees can add up to thousands of pounds for a family — is unlawful and needs to be widened. The judgment is R (Dzineku-Liggison & Ors) v Secretary of...
This morning the government released immigration statistics covering January to March 2020. Although the UK did not officially begin its lockdown until the fourth week in March, the coronavirus effect is “already visible” in the data. Take student visa applications. They had been rising for some time: Tier 4 applications...
On 19 May 2020, a number of media outlets reported that there will be no face-to-face lectures at Cambridge University until summer 2021. The university issued a statement the next day in which it said there had been “partial reporting of only one aspect of our plans”. It clarified that:...
Even by Home Office standards, the decision to defend the case of R (Nmai) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2020] EWHC 1139 (Admin) looks particularly pointless. The claimant had an incredibly strong case and the judge allowed the claim with little hesitation. By allowing it to get...
With the UK still reeling from COVID-19, a mega recession looms. The statistics are sobering; 8 million workers on the government furlough scheme, 2.6 million claims for Universal Credit since the lockdown began and the economy already suffering its biggest contraction since the financial crash in 2008. The economic outlook...
There has been some discussion about the legal basis for coronavirus visa extensions and whether the application process gives the applicant the protection of section 3C. These doubts were originally raised at a time when the application was via email. Now a form-based application process, of sorts, exists. It is...
The requirement for criminal defendants to give their nationality in court is corrupting the justice system and gives the impression of bias against ethnic minorities, a new report has found. Commons, a non-profit criminal defence firm, says that the rule — authorised by section 162 of the Policing and Crime...
The coronavirus pandemic could cause more refugees to flee to Europe, a European Union report has warned. The European Asylum Support Office says that an ISIS resurgence and other conflicts linked to the outbreak may see European countries handling more asylum claims. The Asylum Trends and COVID-19 report, published on...
Immigration lawyers are warning that changes to legal aid for appeals lodged online during the coronavirus pandemic “will do irreparable harm”. The Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association (ILPA) says that adjustments to legal aid rates will deter lawyers from taking on the most complex cases and push already cash-strapped legal aid...
The Home Office has decided to make it more difficult for European residents to become British citizens. EU citizens with settled status who apply for naturalisation may now have to provide evidence that they have been living in the UK legally, according to an update to government nationality policy released...
If you can say one thing about the Home Office, it’s that they have questionable priorities! In the middle of a pandemic, with thousands of migrants not knowing whether or not they will have to leave the UK in just over two weeks, the department has decided to publish a...
Welcome to episode 76 of the Free Movement immigration update podcast. This month we start with an important case concerning the hostile environment and the latest hardline deportation decisions. We then discuss immigration detention, including a case on the impact of coronavirus, before covering benefits, removals of migrants with children,...
The European Commission has formally accused the UK government of breaching EU law on free movement of people. Brussels today launched “infringement proceedings” against the UK, the process used to force EU member countries to comply with their legal obligations. The UK is no longer a member of the European...
Listeners to the Free Movement podcast may have heard us mention the Immigration Bill on the last episode. The second reading was scheduled for 21 April, and we thought (and said) that it would go ahead remotely despite the coronavirus disruption. In the event, that didn’t happen — but the...
“Devani” in my native language of Punjabi/Urdu roughly translates as “crazy” or “mad”. An apt name for the case of Devani [2020] EWCA Civ 612, because it’s never promising when a judgment starts by saying “this appeal has a complicated and unsatisfactory procedural history”. Asylum appeal accidentally dismissed The case...
This hardly comes as news to many of those who work with asylum seekers. For many years the icebreaker for training sessions delivered by one of the main foundations working with torture survivors was to instruct attendees to turn to the person to their left and tell their most embarrassing...
Taking away people’s citizenship became a popular pastime for Home Secretary Theresa May. After decades of the power being essentially taboo, associated as it was with Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, it was resurrected with a vengeance after 2010. One way in which British citizens are stripped of their status...
There’s a second and updated edition out of James Hanratty’s memoir The Making of an Immigration Judge, available from Quartet Books. I reviewed the previous edition and found it a very interesting and revealing read. The author tells me that he’s made significant amendments to this latest edition including “a substantial...
On 13 October 1997, the new Labour government published a document on family visas. It was called the Concession Outside the Immigration Rules for unmarried partners and it was a legal landmark. The concession allowed certain foreigners in the UK to apply for leave to remain on the basis of...
A quick note on this Advocate General’s Opinion fresh from Luxembourg on the Qualification Directive. The case is C‑255/19 Secretary of State for the Home Department v OA. The Qualification Directive sets out the criteria for determining asylum claims in the European Union. The issue in this case was around...
Greece and the UK have signed a new strategic action plan committing to further their cooperation on migration. It has gone largely unreported in mainstream media, but some Greek and English news outlets noted that the joint plan includes the relocation of unaccompanied minors and family reunification from Greece to...
In AS (Safety of Kabul) Afghanistan CG [2020] UKUT 130 (IAC) the Upper Tribunal has approved its 2018 decision that a returning male in good health can safely and reasonably relocate to Kabul subject to individual factors. That decision had been set aside and remitted to the tribunal by the...
By Alex Piletska and John Vassiliou Welcome to your first day as an Administrative Officer, the most junior civil service grade. We’re sure you will fit right in. To help you get to grips with all the technical mumbo-jumbo that can get in the way of reducing net migration, we’ve...
The High Court has ruled that the government must make it easier for migrants to access the welfare system if they are about to become destitute. In an oral ruling delivered this morning, Lord Justice Bean and Mr Justice Chamberlain found that Home Office policy on no recourse to public...
The Home Office tried to put pressure on judges to stop releasing migrants from immigration detention, it has emerged. An official letter from the department to a top immigration judge said that the Home Office was “somewhat surprised” that judges had agreed to release so many people on immigration bail...
On 30 April 2020 the Home Office published an updated policy on the Dublin III Regulation which has some significant changes for family reunification cases. The new policy includes updates on Article 9, Article 13.2 (entry and/or stay), Article 17.2 (discretionary clauses), working with local authorities in response to a...
The abandonment of an ongoing appeal seems to be a hot topic for the Upper Tribunal recently, with the case of Ammari (EEA appeals – abandonment) [2020] UKUT 124 (IAC) following on the heels of MSU and Aziz. This time the facts concern an appeal against a refusal by the...
