Welcome to the March 2019 edition of the Free Movement immigration update podcast. This month we start with a couple of High Court victories by NGOs before turning to some significant developments in business immigration. There’s also been some movement in asylum law which we’ll review before looking at some...
The Court of Appeal has transplanted the test for admitting new evidence in private law appeals into immigration law. Ullah v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWCA Civ 550 is about when the Home Office is allowed to ignore an appeal judgment because it has discovered new...
From 29 March 2019 the government’s new ‘start-up’ visa finally opened for new applicants. Announced last June, the visa is intended as a replacement to the Tier 1 (Graduate Entrepreneur) route but carries with it the expectation that it will, as Sajid Javid declared at the time, ensure that the...
Last week the Home Office announced the establishment of its compensation scheme for those affected by the Windrush scandal (the Scheme). We have published a briefing on how the Scheme will work, who is entitled to compensation, and the key documents involved. There are a number of issues in the...
A rough sleeper from Poland has obtained extra damages for unlawful detention because he went on hunger strike in detention. Holownia v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWHC 794 (Admin) is about the appropriate level of damages for EEA nationals who were homeless and automatically assumed to...
The Court of Appeal has reiterated that a migrant can be regarded as a “persistent offender” for the purposes of deportation law even if he or she has not committed a crime for some time. The case is Binbuga (Turkey) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWCA...
The immigration inspector has criticised the Home Office for its delay in updating its policy on refusing British citizenship to children because they are not of “good character”. David Bolt’s report, published on 4 April 2019 along with two others, also shows that the department is not taking seriously its...
The Home Office has said that it expects to grant fewer visas to overseas entrepreneurs under the new innovator and start-up routes than under the schemes they replace. An official from the Economic Migration Policy Team admits that the department is “not seeking to replicate” the number of visas granted...
R (SRI Lalithambika Foods Ltd) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWHC 761 (Admin) contains a practical tip to help rescue a sponsor licence from suspension or revocation. Charles Bourne QC, sitting as a deputy High Court judge, explains that receipt of a suspension letter presents a...
Consistently the most popular article on Free Movement, somewhat depressingly, is the list of immigration and nationality fees. The fees charged by the Home Office for processing visa, settlement and nationality applications are high, set far above the actual administrative cost to the department. Fees constitute a significant source of...
The Home Office’s new innovator visa went live, in terms of being incorporated into the Immigration Rules, on 29 March 2019. Unfortunately, almost a week on and it’s still anything but live for those hoping to make an application. CJ has been looking into the role of the organisations approved...
The government’s flagship new visa for overseas entrepreneurs is facing early problems as it emerges that few of the organisations required to endorse applicants are prepared to do so. Most of the official endorsing bodies for the newly launched innovator visa have told Free Movement that they are either unable...
In Munday (EEA decision: grounds of appeal) [2019] UKUT 91 (IAC) the tribunal has reiterated that in appeals against EU residence decisions, the appellant cannot rely on human rights arguments, only on EU law arguments. The official headnote: 1. In an appeal against an EEA decision under the Immigration (EEA)...
In the new country guidance case of BF (Tirana – gay men) Albania (CG) [2019] UKUT 93 (IAC) the Upper Tribunal has found that there may well be a risk of persecution for gay men from Albania outside the capital, Tirana, but that they can nevertheless in general reasonably and...
I mentioned on Friday the rumours that there would be no detailed guidance on the new Appendix W, which contains the criteria for getting an innovator or start-up visa. Practitioners may be happy to know that we were wrong about that: there are now 32 pages of guidance on start-up...
The new innovator and start-up visas went live today. They replace the Tier 1 (Entrepreneur) route which is now closed to new applicants, and the Tier 1 (Graduate Entrepreneur) route which will close from 6 July. All applicants for these visas must now have the endorsement of an organisation certifying...
The OISC, or the Office of the Immigration Services Commissioner to give the organisation its full title, is a governmental body established by the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 to regulate the provision of immigration advice and services throughout the UK. The OISC has around 60 staff. The OISC was...
The High Court has rejected a challenge to the £1 an hour pay rate for immigration detainees. Morita v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWHC 758 (Admin) is the culmination of a longstanding battle between Duncan Lewis and the Home Office about payment for immigration detainees who...
Assiduous Free Movement readers and European law aficionados may remember the case of SM (Algeria) v Entry Clearance Officer [2018] UKSC 9, covered in this previous post. The case has now gone from the Supreme Court to the Court of Justice of the European Union, which has held that although a...
The Home Office has announced that seven Service and Support Centres are now open to cater for particularly complex immigration cases. Appointments are free, and “experienced UKVI staff will provide a face to face service and help people throughout their application”. The centres are located in Belfast, Cardiff, Croydon, Glasgow,...
Depending on which pundit you speak to, a no-deal Brexit has either got more likely or less likely over the last couple of weeks. It remains the default if the UK-EU withdrawal agreement is not passed at the third time of asking, and a further extension is not agreed by...
The Home Affairs Select Committee inquiry into immigration detention has released its report which strongly censures “every part of the immigration detention system”. The inquiry was initially triggered in response to the BBC’s ‘Panorama’ programme which uncovered shocking abuse in Brook House immigration removal centre. Preceded by two reports from...
The settled status scheme for EU citizens to stay in the UK after Brexit is about to complete its last test phase and will be fully open on 30 March 2019. We have talked about how the Settlement Scheme operates here: How to apply for “settled status” for EU citizens....
Immigration judges who get things wrong tend not to be named, unless of course you are Dr Majid. All the more surprising, then, that the Court of Appeal sought to name (and, frankly, shame) Judge Anthony Thornton QC in R (Hameed) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019]...
In March 2018, the Home Office stunned the Turkish community by abolishing the route to settlement in the UK that had existed under the Ankara Agreement. It did issue replacement rules for Turkish businesspeople to get indefinite leave to remain a few months later, but these were more stringent than...
In R (Goloshvili) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWHC 614 (Admin), the High Court has found that enforcement of the “Right to Rent” scheme involves discrimination on the grounds of nationality, but it is lawful because of an exemption in the Equality Act 2010. This case...
The Court of Justice of the European Union has today handed down judgment in the case of C-163/17 Jawo. The court held that asylum seekers cannot be sent back even to a fellow EU member state if they are at substantial risk of inhuman or degrading treatment, but set the...
The Home Office amended its definition of a ‘professional sportsperson’ back in January 2019. At the time, I set out why I thought the changes were significant: Why coaching your kid’s football team could breach your visa conditions. Since then, a number of universities and other organisations have also expressed...
In Case C‑557/17 Staatssecretaris van Veiligheid en Justitie v Y.Z. and Others, the Court of Justice of the European Union has ruled that EU law permits the revocation of falsely obtained family reunion residence permits, even when the individual did not know about the deception, but that such decisions must...
The Court of Appeal has rejected a challenge that the time limit for bringing an administrative review only starts when a decision is physically received by an applicant. The appellant in R (Hasan) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWCA Civ 389 tried to argue that the words...
On 14 March the High Court suspended the Home Office’s removals policy. The decision means that the system of giving migrants “removal windows” within which they can be removed from the UK without warning will be halted for the time being. Mr Justice Walker, in a case brought by the...
The government announced on 7 March that two new immigration categories will appear in the Immigration Rules from 29 March 2019 — the innovator and start-up visas. Since then, immigration lawyers and prospective applicants up and down the land have been eagerly waiting to see who the endorsing bodies will...
Welcome to the February 2019 edition of the Free Movement immigration update podcast. This month we start with a quick discussion of deprivation of citizenship in the context of the Shamima Begum case before tackling some of the case law on asylum (in particular Sri Lanka for some reason). Then...
