With one year left before the close of the EU Settlement Scheme, the headline numbers look positive for the Home Office. By the end of May 2020 more than 3.6 million applications had been made, although some people have applied more than once. This headline number may be masking a...
In this bumper bonus episode, Free Movement editor Colin Yeo is interviewed by Satbir Singh, chief executive of the migrants’ rights charity JCWI. The subject of the interview is of course Colin’s book, published on 29 June 2020. Welcome to Britain: Fixing Our Broken Immigration System explains the workings and...
In a statement to Parliament today about Hong Kong, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab confirmed a new bespoke UK immigration route for British National (Overseas) citizens and their dependants. BNO status is a previously obscure form of British nationality held by an estimated 2.9 million people in Hong Kong that until...
A science and research plan published today suggests increased central government scrutiny on Home Office work visa rules and operations. The plan promises a new “Office for Talent” operating out of 10 Downing Street, which “will make it easier for those with the most talent, potential, energy and creativity to...
A solicitor who failed to make immigration applications on behalf of 17 clients and faked an entire judicial review to cover his tracks has been struck off. The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal found that Christopher Ka Ki Cheng had “failed to make or progress” immigration applications on behalf of 17 clients...
Government subsistence payments to potential and confirmed victims of human trafficking will increase from today, 1 July 2020. The Home Office says that it is: Increasing the weekly payment to those in outreach support… from £35 to £39.60. Increasing the weekly payment for child dependents from £20.50 for the first...
Like many other jurisdictions, the First-tier Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) has been forced to change how it works as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. First, HM Courts and Tribunals Service made expanded use of an online procedure which it was already piloting as part of ongoing digital reforms....
A recent report on the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) people in Wales has urged the Welsh government to lobby the UK government to reduce visa costs, especially for those whose income is too low to sponsor their spouses or children. What is the...
Scottish litigation would not be the same unless we had fancy words for everything. “Judge”? – too plain. We have “Lord Ordinary”. “Appeal”? Pah! We have the “reclaiming motion”. “Court of Appeal”? Too simple. We have the “Inner House”. This brief lesson on Scots litigation terminology is by way of...
My book Welcome to Britain: Fixing Our Broken Immigration System launches today. I was delighted to see it getting some coverage in the Observer yesterday. If you haven’t already you can order a copy from Waterstones, Amazon or from your local bookshop. You can also order a signed copy directly from...
We’re holding a free online event next Monday — our first ever live online event in fact — to mark the launch of my book, Welcome to Britain: Fixing Our Broken Immigration System. The book takes you behind the scenes of the United Kingdom’s dysfunctional immigration system to look at...
Citizens Advice reports that the number of migrants with no recourse to public funds asking for help claiming benefits has more than doubled during the coronavirus pandemic. In March, April and May, the charity fielded 1,538 enquiries about lifting the NRPF condition, compared to 731 in the same period last...
To be allowed into the UK as a visitor, border officials must be satisfied that you are a “genuine visitor”. One warning sign is “frequent and successive visits”, which may indicate that you are making the UK your “main home”. What there isn’t is a hard and fast rule that...
The prisons inspector has recommended a national overhaul of the short-term detention system after an inspection of the Home Office’s 13 short-term holding facilities (STHFs). The report by the Chief Inspector of Prisons paints a picture of mismanagement and lack of governance on the part of Border Force, the agency...
Fair play to the litigants and their lay representative for their perseverance in the Scottish appeal case of Saleemi [2020] CSIH 32. Their tenacity is remarkable: the Home Office refused their applications for leave to remain, the First-tier Tribunal refused their appeals, the Upper Tribunal refused to grant permission to appeal,...
Please help us at JCWI understand if the Supreme Court judgment in MM (Lebanon) has made any difference on the ground. The Minimum Income Requirement (the income threshold that British citizens and settled residents have to meet in order to sponsor a partner from outside the European Economic Area) continues...
The Home Secretary has said that she will be accepting the Windrush Lessons Learned Review “in full”. The report by senior police inspector Wendy Williams, published in March 2020, contains 30 recommendations calling for root and branch reform at the Home Office. Speaking to the House of Commons on 23...
A solicitor whose well-respected immigration firm collapsed in 2018 has been fined £15,000 after admitting to breaches of accounting rules. Lawrence Lupin accepted responsibility for six breaches of the rules on financial and practice management, including unpaid interpreter invoices and having a shortfall on the client account. The Solicitors Regulation...
In the case of Merca v SSHD [2020] EWHC 1479 (Admin) the High Court ordered the Home Office to release the claimant within four days. One week and two extension of time requests later, the Home Office has now complied with that order. Mr Merca, detained since December 2019, had...
In the case of C‑754/18 Ryanair the Court of Justice of the European Union has concluded that a non-EU national who holds a permanent residence card from one EU state, is under EU law, exempt from any domestic law requirement to hold a visa to enter another EU state. The...
BH (policies/information: SoS’s duties) Iraq [2020] UKUT 189 (IAC) was the case of an Iraqi Kurd, heard by the Upper Tribunal sitting in Edinburgh. The issue was whether the First-tier Tribunal judge had erred in law because he had not considered the case of AAH (Iraqi Kurds – internal relocation)...
That is the question answered by the Upper Tribunal in SC (paras A398 – 339D: ‘foreign criminal’: procedure) Albania [2020] UKUT 187 (IAC). The appellant was convicted of murder and sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment. So he is, by any reasonable definition, a criminal. He is a citizen of Albania...
When the government announced on 21 May 2020 that NHS and social care workers would be made exempt from the Immigration Health Surcharge, some immigration lawyers pointed out that a political announcement is one thing, legal implementation quite another. Nichola reminded us that “history has shown that the pressure needs...
The government has no way of knowing whether its flagship “hostile environment” policy on unauthorised migrants is working, the National Audit Office has found. In a report published today, the NAO says that the Home Office is “currently unable to assess” whether hostile environment measures “have any meaningful impact on...
In A (A Child) (Rev 1) [2020] EWCA Civ 731 the Court of Appeal has confirmed that decisions of the First-tier Tribunal are not the “starting point” when a family court is considering whether to make a protection order under the Female Genital Mutilation Act 2003. The Home Office had...
The Windrush scandal first made headlines in 2018, but the Home Office is now facing intensified public scrutiny over its role in mistakes that caused profound suffering for so many members of the Windrush generation. Calls for accountability have gained renewed urgency in the context of the Black Lives Matter...
Reading judgments from the Upper Tribunal on the EEA Regulations often feels like going back in time. A lot of the recent case law has clarified points of law in favour of migrants but almost all have come far too late to be useful. The latest case of Chowdhury (Extended...
In SA v The Netherlands (application no. 49773/15), the European Court of Human Rights has issued a judgment which should concern those representing Sudanese asylum seekers. It is not a Grand Chamber decision and the main point of contention was the credibility of the applicant, but nonetheless it suggests that...
“The Home Office must clarify the legal basis for the offers of visa extensions”, says the Home Affairs committee of MPs in a coronavirus report published today. The committee points out that there is considerable uncertainty about whether the department has the legal power to offer coronavirus visa extensions in...
This deceptively simple question was the subject of the Court of Appeal’s decision in the three joined cases reported as Mahmood v Upper Tribunal (Immigration & Asylum Chamber) & Ors [2020] EWCA Civ 717. Sending a picture of your penis to a 15-year-old girl and causing her to send an...
The number of immigration appeals decided by the First-tier Tribunal has fallen almost 70% over the past decade, new Home Office statistics show. The ten years since the tribunal was set up, replacing the old Immigration Appeals tribunal, has seen the number of cases fall from over 160,000 in its...
