An early Christmas present from the Home Office, which has announced the establishment of a team to review new evidence in all pending immigration appeals. The department is now actively encouraging immigration lawyers to submit any new evidence relevant to pending cases, with a view to dropping hopeless appeals before...
The Upper Tribunal has held in the case of LS (Article 45 TFEU – derivative rights) [2018] UKUT 426 (IAC) that the family member of a cross border worker within the EU — one who lives in one EU country but works regularly in another — can derive a right of residence from Article 45 TFEU...
Regular readers of this blog will, by now, be well aware of the Supreme Court’s decision in KO (Nigeria) which determined the correct approach in immigration cases involving children who are either British or who have lived in the UK for seven years. However many, particularly those outside Scotland, may...
In R (FB and NR) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] UKUT 428 (IAC), the appellants challenged the legality of the Home Secretary’s removals policy (traditionally known as Chapter 60 of his Enforcement Guidance and Instructions, now titled Judicial reviews and injunctions). Specifically, the challenge tackled the policy of...
The High Court has rejected an attempt to lower the standard of proof for accepting that a person is the victim of human trafficking. Shu Shin Luh of Garden Court Chambers, fresh off a big win for trafficking victims last month, argued that someone seeking a “conclusive grounds decisions” that they are...
Many of us have been in the situation where, having challenged the opening of a removal window without a decision having made on an outstanding human rights claim, an 11th hour decision comes from the Secretary of State, along with submissions that our claim is now academic. Where the decision...
If you are an EEA/EU citizen or their family member and wish to qualify for an EU law right of residence, then eventually a right of permanent residence, you have to meet certain requirements. For some people — chiefly those not working or self-employed — one of those requirements is...
AM (Iran) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWCA Civ 2706 demonstrates the Court of Appeal’s increasing tendency to find any reason to reject the appeals of foreign criminals. AM is an individual deserving of no sympathy. He has been convicted of raping a 17 year old...
In Secretary of State for the Home Department v SM (Rwanda) [2018] EWCA Civ 2770 the Court of Appeal has ruled that an invalid grant of bail by the First-tier Tribunal has no legal effect. Under the old Immigration Act 1971 bail system the First-tier Tribunal was not able to...
A statement of changes to the Immigration Rules was published today, 11 December 2018. The main changes are to introduce the pilot scheme for short-term agricultural workers that was announced earlier this year, and to expand the domestic violence settlement scheme to cover refugees. The more fundamental changes to Tier...
The Home Office has rowed back last week’s announcement that the Tier 1 (Investor) route was suspended with near-immediate effect. It was widely reported last Thursday that the route would be closed to new applications from midnight the next day due to concerns over money laundering, but the department provided...
The High Court has ruled that the regulations for charging non-residents in advance for non-urgent NHS treatment are lawful. In R (MP) v Secretary of State for Health and Social Care [2018] EWHC 3392 (Admin), decided yesterday, the court rejected a claim that the government had a duty to consult...
R (J1) v Special Immigration Appeals Commission & Anor [2018] EWHC 3193 (Admin) looked at the correct interpretation of two sections of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002. Section 76(1) of that Act says: The Secretary of State may revoke a person’s indefinite leave to enter or remain in the...
Following on from the new lines to take on Sudanese asylum claims that I wrote about in July, the Home Office has now produced evidence in an effort to support the change in policy. Officials have been arguing recently that while non-Arabs are likely to be at risk in the Darfur region,...
A disciplinary statement from the Judicial Conduct Investigations Office: The Lord Chancellor and the Senior President of Tribunals have issued Judge Mark Davies of the First-Tier Tribunal, Immigration and Asylum Chamber, with formal advice following a complaint that he made a remark in court which suggested he holds a prejudicial...
The Court of Justice of the European Union has found that the UK can cancel Brexit by withdrawing its Article 50 notification, without having to get the permission of other EU countries. The result in case C‑621/18 Wightman and Others means that, if political circumstances change soon, the UK could remain...
Claiming asylum can be a traumatic experience. Having to relive the worst events in your life while you undergo a series of interviews and hearings is bad enough. It is even worse when Home Office officials are highly sceptical about a young person’s account, based on a selective or mistaken...
The ETS saga continues and the latest edition is the Court of Appeal’s judgment in Rahman v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWCA Civ 1572. (Editor’s note: we may have been a tad premature in declaring that “The ETS English language testing saga is over“.) The judgment was...
We expected a full statement of changes to the Immigration Rules to be laid before Parliament yesterday but instead we got a statement about the statement. The immigration minister, Caroline Nokes, gave us a sneak preview of a range of tweaks to the rules that will be laid “shortly”. The...
The immigration inspector has ended 2018 as he began it, with a critical report on the Home Office’s internal “country of origin information” that guides asylum decisions. This time around, Mr Bolt effectively accuses the department of failing to take the issue seriously. This inspection report, published on 5 December,...
The Red Cross has published a new report on what they call the “move on” period for refugees, which is the period of 28 days between when they get formally recognised as a refuge and issued with status papers and the end of their centrally administered asylum support housing and...
The government has today published a plan for the rights of EU citizens living in the UK if there is no Brexit deal. It would continue the existing EU Settlement Scheme but make it less generous than if it were bound by the terms of the draft Withdrawal Agreement with...
Blanket media coverage today of the highly respected National Audit Office’s report into the Home Office’s Handling of the Windrush situation. “Situation” is one of those Whitehall irregular verbs: I have an issue, you have a situation, they have a scandal. Lawyers may also quibble with the NAO’s use of...
Last March, Asylum Aid and NatCen held a discussion about our research findings on women and asylum appeals, kindly hosted by Garden Court Chambers. The most practical of the resulting recommendations was from barrister Kathryn Cronin: to produce an online resource to let asylum appellants know what to expect at...
The Office of the Immigration Services Commissioner (the OISC to those who know it well) has quietly published guidance outlining when it considers it will be illegal to provide advice to EU citizens and their non-EU family members under the settled status scheme. The guidance barely mentions the scheme itself and...
An investigation into abuse at Brook House immigration removal centre has castigated those in charge of the privately run detention centre. The report, commissioned by outsourcing firm G4S following an exposé by the BBC’s Panorama programme last year, concludes that Brook House is afflicted with incompetent management, poor facilities and chronic understaffing....
A top legal adviser to the Court of Justice of the European Union has recommended that the UK be allowed to cancel its Article 50 notification triggering Brexit and stay in the EU if it wants. Advocate General Sánchez-Bordona writes in an Opinion released this morning that the UK has the...
Immigration lawyers have until Thursday 6 December to publish their rates under price transparency rules issued by the Solicitors Regulation Authority. The SRA says that firms must put information about what they charge individual clients for immigration applications and tribunal appeals, except for asylum work, in a prominent place on...
Our comprehensive online immigration law training course for new immigration lawyers or advisers is perfect for the OISC Level 1 exams. It costs just £20 plus VAT to get started as a monthly member with access to this and over 100 hours of our other courses, and you can cancel...
New figures from the Home Office reveal that asylum seekers are being held in detention centres for five times longer than the government’s own recommendation when the system was introduced. The data, obtained from a Freedom of Information request, shows that the average asylum applicant under Detained Asylum Casework is...
The Court of Appeal has allowed a deportation appeal because the appellant was able to demonstrate that the strength of his family and private life is a “very compelling circumstance” outweighing the public interest in deportation. Forrester v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWCA Civ 2653 illustrates...
This is a collection of statistics on the UK immigration system. The Office for National Statistics, Home Office and Courts & Tribunals Service publish regular quarterly data on the number of migrants coming to the UK, how immigration applications are processed and how appeals are disposed of. We use these to regularly update the...
In Oksuzoglu (EEA appeal – “new matter”) [2018] UKUT 00385 (IAC), the appellant was a Ukrainian national and the sponsor was a British national. They had spent some seven months in Cyprus and on their return to the UK, the appellant applied for a residence card invoking the Surinder Singh...
R (Basir) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWCA Civ 2612 is about section 3C of the Immigration Act 1971. Section 3C works as follows: where a person makes a valid application to extend his or her leave to enter or remain and the application is refused, that...
Today the High Court granted permission for a judicial review challenge to the exorbitant fees that the Home Office charges to children registering as British citizens. The Project for the Registration of Children as British Citizens argues that charging kids £1,012 to take up their legal entitlement to become British is unlawful. In...
A client’s statement “I was foolish to…” in a witness statement is sometimes the starting point for the submission “My client is not clever enough to lie/to lie to the extent alleged by the Respondent”. It is an uncomfortable submission to make in the presence of a client but it can...
People who want a UK visa or visa extension have to provide the Home Office with “biometric information”; that is, fingerprints and a photograph. If they don’t sent in their biometric information, the visa application will be invalid and the applicant risks becoming an overstayer. This, as the decision in R...
