The Home Office report on the second phase of its EU Settlement Scheme pilot revealed this week that nearly one in five applicants did not receive sufficient evidence of UK residence from automated checks alone. Of the 27,000 decisions issued during Phase 2 of the scheme some 4,500 applicants for...
The EU Settlement Scheme is now open for business. Almost all European Union citizens living in the UK who wish to stay here after Brexit must apply to it over the next couple of years. The only significant exceptions are: British citizens (who cannot apply for the scheme even if...
An integral part of the procedure of suing for damages is disclosure. Where Home Office disclosure is inadequate or incomplete, it is necessary to go on pressing for compliance with rule 31 of the Civil Procedure Rules and for specific disclosure. Those requiring a lesson in how to do so...
In the case of R (Akturk) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2017] EWHC 297 (Admin), Mr Justice Holman had granted the claimant’s judicial review on traditional public law grounds of unfair decision making. He had also held that the abolition of the right of appeal in Turkish...
The High Court has ruled that the Home Office should have published its policy about transferring child asylum seekers to the UK from Calais earlier, but dismissed arguments about the substance of the policy. ZS v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWHC 75 (Admin) concerns an unaccompanied...
Basically, neither the Isle of Man nor the Channel Islands are members of the European Union and therefore the spouse of an EU national who was working there could not benefit from EU free movement law. If only Rees-Mogg et al just moved there, perhaps we could just cancel the...
A reminder from the Court of Justice of the European Union that EU law still applies to the UK until Brexit actually happens. The Irish asylum authorities had asked, in effect, whether the triggering of Article 50 meant that it shouldn’t send asylum seekers across to the UK any more....
The domestic violence concession allows victims of domestic abuse access to public funds while they make an application for settlement. The High Court has now made clear that this concession only applies to those who are already on the route to settlement as a partner in the case of FA...
An immigration solicitor has been suspended indefinitely for forging a sick note for the tribunal. The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) alleged that Sandia Kumari Pamma had not properly prepared for a child client’s asylum appeal and “decided to falsify a sick note that she had obtained from another client file”...
The Prime Minister has just announced that the £65 fee for EU citizens applying for post-Brexit settled status will be scrapped. Speaking in Parliament this evening (21 January 2019), Theresa May said: having listened to concerns from Members – and organisations like the “The 3 Million” group – I can...
The Home Office has released a report on its EU Settlement Scheme pilot phase, carried out late last year. The scheme, under which almost all EU citizens living in the UK must apply to stay here after Brexit, opens for most applicants today. The Home Office says that it made...
The Immigration Rules should be redrafted and restructured in order to cut down on complexity, the Law Commission says. Launching a consultation on Simplifying the Immigration Rules today, the influential law reform body proposes major revisions to “provide a more logical structure, remove unnecessary repetitions and improve the drafting”. The regulations...
If there is no ten years continuous, lawful residence for the purposes of para 276B(i)(a) of the Immigration Rules, an applicant cannot rely on para 276B(v) to argue that any period of overstaying (for the purposes of 276B(i)(a)) should be disregarded. Para 276B(v) involves a freestanding and additional requirement over...
The High Court has allowed a Home Office appeal arguing that it is not necessarily unlawful to put British citizens in immigration detention. The judgment in Home Office v TR & Anor [2019] EWHC 49 (QB) concerned an eight-month-old baby detained with his mother for almost a fortnight despite lawyers...
Just flagging this up for those interested in asylum claims based on religious belief: C‑56/17 Fathi v Bulgaria. It is from late 2018 but the English language version was only recently published. The applicant was an Iranian who had converted to Christianity whilst still in Iran, or at least claimed...
For reasons that don’t appear to have been explained anywhere, at least not that I can find, the Home Office has made significant changes to the definition of a professional sportsperson. This is important because a prohibition on performing activities as a professional sportsperson is a condition of most UK...
In this case the Home Office repeatedly refused to accept that a child in France was related as claimed to his brother in the UK. First the Home Office failed to even contemplate taking DNA evidence, then eventually decided it would be illegal to do so in France anyway. Looking...
A former recruitment consultant has been given a 12-week suspended sentence for providing unregulated immigration advice. The Office of the Immigration Services Commissioner (OISC) prosecuted Namrata Thakkar, of Priory Gardens, Acton in London for continuing to give immigration advice despite no longer being covered by its regulation scheme. Ms Thakkar...
Since January 2015, 1,700 settlement applications from Tier 1 (General) migrants have been refused under paragraph 322(5) of the Immigration Rules, primarily due to discrepancies between earnings declared to HMRC and to the Home Office at the time of making an application. During that time, the higher courts in England...
The co-founder of an immigration law firm has failed in a High Court bid to overturn Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal sanctions for professional misconduct. Mr Justice Lavender rejected the appeal of Malik Mohammed Nazeer, a solicitor of over 21 years’ call, against a £20,000 fine and practice restrictions imposed by the...
Another example of selective cessation of refugee status by the Home Office, ostensibly based on a change in the country of origin but in truth triggered by criminality on the part of the refugee. In this case the refugee had entered the UK as a child but later committed several...
The Court of Appeal has reluctantly but unanimously agreed with the Home Office’s decision to refuse a Tier 1 (Entrepreneur) application for further leave to remain based on a factual issue of specified documents not being submitted. It rejected arguments that evidential flexibility should apply. The case is Harpreet Singh...
The Secretary of State has confirmed that he intends to introduce appeal rights for extended family members of EEA nationals who have been refused a residence card. The government will lay legislation amending the Immigration (European Economic Area) Regulations 2016 “as soon as reasonably practicable”. This important statement arises out...
Most migrants who try to research their immigration case from inside detention centres find useful websites blocked by the authorities, according to data collected by the charity Bail for Immigration Detainees (BID). The charity says that 83% of detainees have been unable to look up basic online resources on immigration...
Welcome to the December 2018 edition of the Free Movement immigration update podcast. It’s a bumper issue, with a host of immigration announcements just before Christmas to cover, including two sets of changes to the Immigration Rules, a white paper, an Immigration Bill and announcements on EU citizens’ rights. We...
In R (Mohamed) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWHC 3547 (Admin), the High Court found that the Home Office had unlawfully delayed making a decision on an indefinite leave to remain application made by the claimant as a child. Frustratingly, though, the court also ruled that...
KC (Gambia) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWCA Civ 2847 is an asylum case that bounced from the First-tier Tribunal to the Upper Tribunal twice before landing before the Court of Appeal. The various tribunal judges were unable to agree on whether the appellant, who was...
A newly published report by the immigration inspector deals with the Home Office approach to vulnerable adults. It is heavy on management-speak, being mostly concerned with internal processes and structures. These are important, of course, as evidenced by the case study of the South African man whose file was only...
In the case of Harverye v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWCA Civ 2848, Lord Justice Irwin in the Court of Appeal held that where an appeal against deportation is allowed, the Home Office cannot make a second decision to deport unless there has been a change...
Good, clear new policy on DNA evidence in immigration cases from the Home Office following the scandal last year: The Home Office cannot require that DNA evidence is provided as part of an immigration application. This is reflected in the fact that the department has no specific statutory power to...
There is so much in the immigration white paper, publishedjust before Christmas, that sounds pretty good for employers. But if the sponsorship system is to cope when extended to cover skilled workers arriving from the EU, a huge amount of work will be needed to simplify it. The white paper...
In Cabucak v Germany (application no. 18706/16), the European Court of Human Rights dismissed a strong Article 8 claim to uphold a deportation order made against a serial drug-dealer. Mr Cabucak, who despite being a Turkish national was born and raised in Germany, has a tragic life story. His father killed...
The Court of Appeal has upheld the High Court decision that Operation Nexus — the “operational and intelligence partnership for immigration enforcement” between the police and the Home Office that we have commented on several times previously — is lawful. The case is R (The Centre for Advice on Individual...
In addition to the deluge of new Immigration Rules and legislation we faced in the May years, and now the looming Brexit iceberg, a major (if inevitable) change of recent times has been the digitisation of immigration applications. Unlike with Rules and legislation changes, there was little opportunity to scrutinise...
The immigration and asylum tribunal has issued updated but essentially unchanged Practice Directions. The new document is almost identical to the previous version, dated November 2014. I’ve put the new Directions into a text comparison programme alongside the old and it flags up just one change: 13. Bail applications 13.1...
The tribunal has concluded, finally, that particularly vulnerable asylum seekers face breaches of Article 3 if returned to Italy to have their asylum claims processed under the Dublin Regulation. It would be fair to say the circumstances where this applies are tightly drawn by the tribunal: the vulnerability would need...
A new Immigration Services Commissioner will finally be appointed in 2019 — over three years after the last commissioner stood down. There has been no leader at the Office of the Immigration Services Commissioner, which regulates over 3,000 registered immigration advisers, since late 2015. Deputy commissioner Dr Ian Leigh wrote...
Windrush The defining event of 2018 in the world of immigration law was without doubt the exposure of what has become known as the Windrush scandal. The way the scandal was eventually picked up by all news outlets caught everyone by surprise, me included. It has led to significant changes...
