States have domestic and international legal obligations to provide suitable housing for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. But a vulnerable young client at the Refugee Legal Support (RLS) clinic in Athens was last month kicked out of his accommodation for breaking the shelter’s rules. Jay*, a 17-year-old boy from Afghanistan, was condemned...
Immigration barristers with public access clients must publish their rates online under new price transparency rules. Bar Standards Board regulations now say that all self-employed barristers and chambers must provide basic pricing information, such as whether they charge fixed or hourly fees. Public access barristers taking on certain work —...
The High Court has ordered the Home Office to return an asylum seeker to the UK from Uganda because her 2013 asylum appeal hearing was unfair. PN v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWHC 1616 (Admin) is the latest in a series of cases about the consequences...
The government has promised to abandon the strict 45-day time limit on help for victims of human trafficking following a judicial review challenge. The litigation, organised by Duncan Lewis, has forced the Home Office to concede that the 45-day policy is incompatible with the Council of Europe’s anti-trafficking convention and...
Staff shortages mean that the immigration inspector’s office is struggling to effectively scrutinise the work of the Home Office, according to the organisation’s annual report. There are supposed to be 25 inspectors working under chief David Bolt, but by the end of March 2019 there were just 11 in post....
Last night the BBC concluded its three-part documentary about immigration lawyers and their clients, Who Should Get to Stay in the UK?. The series followed a variety of visa applicants and asylum seekers on their journey through the UK’s immigration system, giving the general public an insight into what it’s...
JOB TITLE: Head of Legal Protection CONTRACT: Sabbatical Cover (10 months cover; full-time 37.5 hours per week) SALARY: £45,000 p.a. BENEFITS: 22.5 days holiday, plus 4% matched pension contribution LOCATION: Camden, Central London RESPONSIBLE TO: Kerry Smith, CEO The Helen Bamber Foundation (HBF) is a specialist UK charity which provides...
In immigration law, deadlines are important. They also frequently cause confusion. Bhavsar (late application for PTA: procedure) [2019] UKUT 196 (IAC) is an example of the complications that missing a deadline can cause. In Bhavsar the Upper Tribunal decided that, where an application for permission to appeal is submitted to...
Official government guidance claims that victims of human trafficking get rich from being sexually exploited in the UK and can be refused asylum, it has emerged. A new Home Office policy document on women trafficked from Nigeria says that those who become “wealthy from prostitution” enjoy “high socio-economic status” and...
Migrants who have spent ten years in the UK with continuous and lawful leave can apply for indefinite leave to remain (ILR). Can leave be “continuous” if it involved short gaps between lawful periods of leave where an applicant has overstayed? This was the question addressed by the Court of...
An immigration lawyer has been struck off after being caught on camera four years ago advising an undercover reporter about a sham marriage. The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal made the decision in the case of Syed Mazaher Naqvi, a sole practitioner based in London. The tribunal found that Naqvi had failed...
Detention in a young offender institution has much the same impact on an EU citizen’s enhanced protection against deportation as imprisonment in an adult jail, the Court of Appeal has held. The case is Secretary of State for the Home Department v Viscu [2019] EWCA Civ 1052. EU deportation law...
The Tier 1 (Entrepreneur) visa route was closed in March 2019. At the same time, two new immigration routes — Innovator and Start-up — came into being. But entry to either scheme rests on the notoriously difficult task of getting an endorsement. Innovator – just too big a risk? I...
The government has asked a group of independent academic experts to look again at the Migration Advisory Committee’s proposal for a £30,000 minimum salary for a UK work visa post-Brexit. It has commissioned the, er, Migration Advisory Committee. In September 2018, the MAC published a major report on the future...
This week, to celebrate the GREAT weather we’ve been having, we’re running a summer sale until 30 June 2019 on individual and small group (up to 10 users) annual memberships: half price for the first year for new members. To claim your discount, use code JUNESALE when making your purchase:...
This week the Court of Appeal quashed the certification of an Albanian asylum claim as “clearly unfounded”. In SP (Albania) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWCA Civ 951, the court found that the Home Office had not properly investigated the appellant’s account of being persecuted before...
Unfortunately it sometimes happens that a claim entirely lacking in substantive merit gets into a procedural tangle which gives it an undeserved lease of life. The present case is an extreme example. – Lord Justice Leggatt The Court of Appeal has confirmed that the Upper Tribunal has the same power...
Post: Public or Immigration Law Solicitor and Training Lead Reports to: Head of Legal PracticeSalary: circa £33,000 p/a (depending on experience) 5% employer pension contributionHours: 35 hours per week (flexible or part-time working also considered)Leave: 28 days including bank holidaysLocation: Sheffield (with regular visits to ATLEU’s London office) […]
...The inelegant phrase “a sufficiency of protection” originates in a now obscure series of tribunal determinations from the 1990s. It was eventually entrenched in law by the House of Lords case of Horvath [2001] AC 489, but the diverse judgments of their Lordships combined with the inherent tensions in the...
“Country and expert evidence is indispensable in supporting an asylum seeker’s case. Asylos helps me – and immigration officials – better understand my client’s circumstances.” – Tori Sicher, Sutovic & Hartigan Asylos is a small charity helping lawyers and refugees prove asylum cases by producing free individual research reports. This...
The Supreme Court has today dismissed the Home Office appeal in the case of Gubeladze [2019] UKSC 31. The judgment affects hundreds of thousands of EU citizens from the so-called Accession Eight (or “A8”) countries that joined the EU in 2004 and means that the United Kingdom unlawfully imposed a...
Since 20 May 2019, people from Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea and the USA have been able to enter the UK using ePassport gates (‘eGates’). British and EU citizens have been able to use eGates since 2008. The Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, said at the time that...
The Court of Appeal has upheld the appeal against deportation of a man sentenced to five years’ imprisonment, in the process providing a good example of the kind of human rights arguments that will sway judges in this notoriously difficult area of law. The court reiterated the high threshold that...
A proposed inquiry into the now infamous abuse of migrants at Brook House detention centre does not go far enough, a High Court judge has ruled. In a judgment handed down today, Mrs Justice May held that an underpowered Prisons and Probation Ombudsman investigation was not sufficient under human rights...
Welcome to the May 2019 edition of the Free Movement immigration update podcast. This was a mercifully quiet month in immigration law, for a change, but there’s still a few decisions from the Court of Appeal to be aware of — particularly on asylum and trafficking — as well as...
SS v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWHC 1402 (Admin) is about when the Home Office can legitimately apply its own policy instead of a country guidance decision from the Upper Tribunal. The High Court has ruled that it was irrational do so when the Home Office...
The percentage of immigration decisions being reversed by judges is at its highest on record, new statistics show. Over 50% of appeals to the immigration tribunal — mostly challenges to Home Office refusals to allow people to stay in the UK — succeeded in the last financial year. The success...
AL (Albania) [2019] EWCA Civ 950 is a new Court of Appeal judgment which says some important things about the approach a tribunal judge should take to factual findings made by another tribunal judge in a related appeal. In this case, AL’s elder brother had claimed asylum on much the...
Tribunal bosses have put their foot down on fast track asylum appeals, refusing the government’s push for an accelerated process for appellants in immigration detention. The Tribunal Procedure Committee said that it would not be re-introducing a system like the Detained Fast Track that the courts found to be unlawful...
Immigration judges must assess whether an asylum seeker had a reasonable opportunity to claim asylum in a safe third country before holding that a failure to do so should damage their credibility, the Court of Appeal has ruled. KA (Afghanistan) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWCA...
The Law Commission has proposed a new surrogacy pathway, replacing the “outdated” existing laws about having a child on behalf of somebody else. The key provisions of the current legislation have remained relatively constant for almost thirty years, despite considerable change in the use of surrogacy arrangements over that period...
We have launched an updated second edition of our Settled Status Handbook on applying to the EU Settlement Scheme. This is our guide for EU citizens and their family members applying for settled or pre-settled status to legally remain in the UK after Brexit. The update partly reflects tweaks to...
It was hailed as an emergency solution to the refugee crisis but figures reveal that only 36 Syrians had been removed from Greece under the “EU-Turkey statement” by the end of 2018, write Taimour Lay and Theodoris Zeis. It is over three years since the “EU-Turkey statement” on the Mediterranean...
The immigration tribunal is piloting a new system of automatically “de-listing” (judge-speak for cancelling or adjourning) appeal hearings where an appellant serves their bundle late. I’ve run into the pilot at Newport, but responses on Twitter suggest that it is taking place all over the country. At Newport, at least,...
There are growing concerns around the Home Office’s treatment of children and young people from Albania, with legal practitioners now raising the alarm about the increasing certification of Albanian asylum applications as ‘clearly unfounded’. At the same time, significant gaps in evidence are consistently acting as a barrier to successful...
Home Office charter flights still involve too much physical restraint of the migrants being removed, according to a watchdog’s annual report. The Independent Monitoring Boards’ Charter Flight Monitoring Team published its annual report yesterday, saying that it “remains concerned” about flights to other European Union countries in particular. Overall, the...
The Court of Justice of the European Union has confirmed that subsidiary protection status must be revoked by member states if they discover that it has been granted in error, even if the applicant did nothing to mislead the authorities. Case C‑720/17 Bilali v Bundesamt für Fremdenwesen und Asylis is...
Two solicitors have been fined for pursuing “spurious” immigration cases — many of which they knew were hopeless because they had advised the client as much. Nurgus Malik and Jusna Begum Miah, who at the time worked for M-R Solicitors in London, admitted several counts of professional misconduct at the...
