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...
Article 2(n) of the Dublin III regulation provides: Member States shall not hold a person in detention for the sole reason that he or she is subject to the procedure established by this Regulation. When there is a significant risk of absconding, Member States may detain the person concerned in...
I am seeing more and more people who have filed their own visa application, relying on what they’ve read on the immigration pages of gov.uk. They often tell me that they followed the information on the website carefully when preparing their application and were surprised to receive a refusal citing...
For those lawyers, like my Lord and myself, who have spent many years practising in the family jurisdiction, this is not a comfortable interpretation to apply. But that is what Parliament has decided… So held Lord Justice Baker, giving judgment in SSHD v KF (Nigeria) [2019] EWCA Civ 2051, and...
Citizenship in Times of Turmoil?, a book which I edited and published with Edward Elgar Law earlier this year, was launched a few days back. Hosted by the law firm Anthony Gold’s housing law team, the event was attended by legal practitioners, activists and academics of several disciplines. This was...
The Upper Tribunal is to consider a legal challenge to the government’s policy on immigration fee exemptions. Duncan Lewis’s public law team have secured permission for a judicial review in which they argue that the fee waiver policy wrongly focuses on whether migrants would be made “destitute” by the fee,...
An incorrect decision under the EU Settlement Scheme could impact the terms by which EU citizens and their family members are able to reside and access services in the UK after Brexit. Statistics we have retrieved on administrative reviews of Settlement Scheme decisions show that 89.5% of initial decisions reviewed...
The EU Settlement Scheme has an application deadline, meaning that anyone who misses the cut-off to apply successfully for a post-Brexit status will be unlawfully resident in the UK. What will happen to people who have not made an application by the deadline is unclear. In the worst case scenario,...
R (Al-Enein) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWCA Civ 2024 is another valiant but failed attempt to challenge the Home Office’s good character policy in relation to applications for British citizenship. The issue in this case was whether the policy of looking back at a person’s...
A crowdfunding campaign has raised the £2,500 in Home Office fees needed to reunite a Ghanaian mother in the UK with her 13-year-old son stranded in Ghana. The fund was started on the initiative of Bethan Lant of the charity Praxis, who wrote about her client’s desperate situation on Free...
The new Tottenham Hotspur manager, José Mourinho, recently vowed not to repeat his past mistakes, but instead will make new mistakes. The Home Office’s new guidance on statelessness, as with its approach to other topics, both repeats some mistakes of the past and makes new ones. But the revised guidance...
An asylum appeal by an Eritrean woman, initially rejected by an immigration judge, has been overturned by the Upper Tribunal after it emerged the court interpreter embarked on a political rant to the woman’s barrister at the bus stop outside court afterwards. The case is TS (interpreters) Eritrea [2019] UKUT...
The Innovator visa, launched in March 2019 to “enhance the UK’s offer to overseas entrepreneurial talent“, has attracted a grand total of 14 applications in its first six months of operation. That compares to 997 applications for its predecessor visa, Tier 1 (Entrepreneur), over the same period last year. Figures...
There’s been a lot written on this blog recently about overstaying. Why do we keep banging on about it, you may ask? Because even a short period of technical overstaying, even if entirely innocent and endorsed by the Home Office, can cause problems for future applications. This was demonstrated recently...
The Court of Appeal has given judgment in CI (Nigeria) v SSHD [2019] EWCA Civ 2027, providing further guidance on the law relating to the deportation of foreign criminals, and in particular on the meaning in section 117C(4) of the Nationality Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 of “lawful residence”, “social...
The Supreme Court has confirmed in the case of Hemmati v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] UKSC 56 that the detention of asylum seekers for their removal to other EU states under the Dublin Regulation was unlawful between 1 January 2014 and 15 March 2017, when new...
“Be careful what you wish for!”, could be the headline for the case of Ahmed (rule 18; PTA; Family Court materials) Pakistan [2019] UKUT 357 (IAC). Haseeb Ahmed, a Pakistani citizen, was initially refused an application for leave to remain by the Secretary of State. He won his appeal at...
We’ve received the following enquiry about the rules on settled status for EU citizens and their families after Brexit: Can the third country national spouse of a dual EU/British national apply for the EU Settlement Scheme? “Third country national spouse” is immigration lawyers’ jargon for a non-European husband or wife....
Today sees the start of industrial action, including strikes, across 60 universities. Members of the University and Colleges Union are striking over pensions, pay and conditions for the next eight days, with other forms of action planned when they return to work. During the strikes of February 2018, there was...
Most people born in Northern Ireland have or are entitled to dual citizenship, British and Irish. Generally people apply for the passport of the country which they identify with — nationalists for Irish passports, unionists for British — and are never troubled by the legal fact that they may technically...
If the polls are to be believed, the manifesto that the Conservatives launched yesterday will be the legislative agenda for the UK’s next government. Whichever way you intend to vote in the upcoming election, it needs careful scrutinising to see what a Conservative victory could mean for the UK’s immigration...
Welcome to episode 70 of the Free Movement immigration update podcast. This month we lead on some case law on asylum before turning to the latest changes to the EU Settlement Scheme (yes, they’ve replaced Appendix EU all over again). We then discuss new Home Office guidance on deception, an...
All eyes were on Birmingham yesterday for the launch of the Labour Party’s manifesto. Billed as “radical” by Jeremy Corbyn, its stated purpose is to offer “real change” and to build a fairer Britain. But this sense of radicalism does not wholly extend to Labour’s immigration policy. Those who were...
In July 2018, a Ghanaian lady named Florence* received a call to say that her 12-year-old son was about to be left on the streets of Accra unless she came to take him. The boy had been in the care of Florence’s sister, who had recently died. Florence dropped everything...
The Upper Tribunal has provided guidance on how First-tier Tribunal judges should approach attempts by the Home Office to revoke refugee status from Somalian nationals. SB (refugee revocation; IDP camps) Somalia [2019] UKUT 358 (IAC) confirms that it is, in principle, possible to revoke refugee status because internal relocation is...
This is overall a good manifesto on immigration from the Liberal Democrats. There are some choices that niggle, but often in areas where there is no perfect answer. It is still nowhere near forward-thinking or ambitious enough, and it will be interesting to compare to Labour’s. The aspirational benchmark, of...
In Idahosa v R [2019] EWCA Crim 1953 the Court of Appeal has ruled that an asylum seeker who had stopped over in the United Kingdom for 54 days en route to Canada can rely on the exception to false documents offences available to refugees. The court took a purposive...
As we’ve highlighted in recent blog posts, the Immigration Rules aggressively punish overstaying, to the point where accidentally staying beyond the expiry date of your visa even by just one day will basically ruin your life. “So what?”, you might say. “Overstayers are criminals and should be punished accordingly”. Clearly...
A law preventing men from passing on British citizenship to their biological offspring where the child’s mother is married to someone else may now be reconsidered in light of a government decision to drop its appeal against a landmark ruling made last summer. The original case of K [2018] EWHC...
The Upper Tribunal judgment in MS (British citizenship; EEA appeals) Belgium [2019] UKUT 356 (IAC) confirms that certain EU citizen children in the UK can be considered lawfully resident for the purposes of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, even if they (or their EU citizen parents...
Lawyers representing an Albanian woman suffering from appalling sexual exploitation have secured improvements in the system for reconsidering whether someone is a victim of human trafficking. Mr Justice Kerr found that the policy, which required officials to ignore new evidence if it didn’t come from approved sources, was wildly unlawful...
