Immigration and nationality law as it relates to international adoption is undoubtedly complex and a topic with which only a few practitioners are familiar. There are numerically very few international adoption cases, after all. The inevitable cross over with family law does not make it any easier. This blog post...
In JR v Advocate General for Scotland [2024] CSOH 64, the Court of Session has encouraged greater use of the powers to transfer a judicial review to the Upper Tribunal and laid out what factors might be relevant in making that decision. In Scotland, all applications for judicial review are...
The High Court has held that the decision made by Suella Braverman not to implement recommendations made in Wendy Williams’ review into the Windrush scandal was unlawful. The recommendations specifically related to the creation of a Migrants’ Commissioner role and the review of the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and...
Welcome to the weekly Free Movement newsletter! It was Refugee Week last week and so we updated and republished some of our explainers, including this one which takes an in depth look at the latest data on the asylum system. The backlog has essentially moved to the extremities of the asylum system,...
Today the British Institute of International & Comparative Law, the Anti-Trafficking Monitoring Group and the Human Trafficking Foundation have published a new report on the impact of the Nationality and Borders Act on survivors of modern slavery. Provisions in the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 relating to modern slavery came...
The Home Office introduced immigration concessions and special visa schemes in response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. These were the Ukraine family scheme, Ukraine extension scheme, and Homes for Ukraine scheme. The department’s “core plan” was to issue visas rather than formal refugee status to Ukrainian citizens,...
In this podcast Sonia discusses Kalayaan’s new report “12 years of modern slavery” with Avril Sharp, immigration lawyer and policy officer. The report looks at the history of the overseas domestic worker visa, and the harmful changes that have made. They also discuss the impact of the Nationality and Borders...
Closing date: 7 July 2024 Glasgow Thorntons’ has one of the leading immigration practices in Scotland, assisting clients through complex immigration processes with expertise, professionalism, empathy and care. We now have a new opportunity for another Caseworker to join the team in Glasgow. What to expect This is an exciting...
Over and over again we hear that refugees should claim asylum in the first safe country the reach. There are variations on the theme. Genuine refugees claim asylum in the first safe country. Refugees should or even must claim asylum in the first safe country. The asylum seekers coming to...
Consultant Legal Administrator at PRCBC We need an experienced legal administrator on a consultancy (self-employed) basis. Our preference would be 10-5pm for 2 days per week, including the first Saturday of each month. We are very small, registered charity representing children and young people with their complex citizenship rights. We...
Currently a comfortable 23 points ahead in opinion polls with just under three weeks to the general election, the Labour Party has published its election manifesto. Sectors of the economy hit by a massive recent hike in salary thresholds for sponsoring skilled workers will be poring over the manifesto for...
This piece is about refugees, asylum seekers, and the Refugee Convention. It outlines who can be a refugee, and how being a refugee and having “refugee status” are two very different things. We also explore the rights and entitlements available to refugees and to asylum seekers awaiting the outcome of...
Welcome to the weekly Free Movement newsletter! When I wrote up RAMFEL’s section 3C case last week I ended on the point that the use of digital immigration status is incompatible with the hostile environment. It is difficult to see how the government’s switch to digital status is going to be anything...
One of the changes wrought by the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 (remember that?) is an apparent increase in the standard of proof in refugee status claims. This change applies to everyone who applied for asylum on or after 28 June 2022. There has been a huge waiting time for...
Lawyers do not own the word “refugee”. The term has been in use since the eighteenth century and has its own evocative, wider meaning in the public consciousness. Those fleeing Ukraine or relocating to the United Kingdom from Hong Kong can validly be referred to as “refugees”, for example, even...
Here is your May round up of Free Movement. In this episode Colin and Sonia look at the latest immigration, asylum and trafficking statistics, including discussion of the fee waiver backlog. They also cover the latest on “safe and legal” routes for those in Afghanistan and Gaza. Sonia nerds it...
The latest quarterly statistics for the tribunals covering the period January to March 2024 have been published today and in news that should not surprise anyone, the clearing of the legacy asylum backlog and increase in refusals has had a huge impact on the number of asylum appeals pending in...
The High Court has held that, when judicially reviewing a decision of the Upper Tribunal refusing permission to appeal (known as a Cart judicial review), there is no oral permission hearing. This was the conclusion reached in Karim v Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) [2024] EWHC 1368 (Admin). The...
Welcome to the weekly Free Movement newsletter! The Home Office appears to be continuing to refuse to release those people being unlawfully detained under threat of being sent to Rwanda, as Bail for Immigration Detainees and others reported further bail grants last week. The new date provided by the Home...
Two claimants, the charity Refugee and Migrant Forum of Essex and London “RAMFEL” and Ms Adjei, have succeeded in a judicial review where it was held that the Home Secretary’s failure to provide people on section 3C leave with digital evidence of their status was unlawful. The case is R...
In the latest and last judgment in some fairly complex litigation around the use of hotels to accommodation and other issues, the High Court seems to have finally got to a point with Kent County Council where they accept that they cannot get around the duty to find a placement...
The Court of Appeal has dismissed an appeal alleging procedural unfairness in a First-tier Tribunal hearing where the judge asked a “significant” number of questions. The court also gave a brief reminder of the importance of counsel raising any issues with judicial conduct during the appeal itself. The case is...
With EU free movement fading into memory, the main visa route available for non British and Irish nationals wanting to work in the UK is now the Skilled Worker visa. The Skilled Worker visa is a sponsorship system: a foreign worker cannot simply apply for this visa unaided. Applicants need...
The Senior President of Tribunals has issued a new practice direction giving guidance to the First-tier Tribunal on the provision of written reasons for a decision. The practice direction refers to the procedure rules which specify where the tribunal must provide written reasons for its decision (rule 29) although “the...
Shortly after it received Royal Assent last year, the Illegal Migration Act 2023 was described as “utterly unworkable and extortionately expensive”, “deeply unethical” and “a traffickers’ charter”. Despite those comments by the shadow Immigration Minister, Labour has not committed to repealing the Illegal Migration Act. However I am hopefully not...
Welcome to the weekly Free Movement newsletter! Let’s start off with some litigation updates. As part of the FDA’s judicial review which remains listed for Thursday this week, the government has told the High Court that it will not carry out enforced removals to Rwanda before the election. That confirmation was formally requested...
The British Nationality (Irish Citizens) Act 2024 was one of the final pieces of legislation passed by the government before dissolution and when brought into force it will provide an entitlement to registration as a British citizen to Irish citizens who meet the requirements. The Act is a short one,...
As the Home Office continues to step up enforcement action in the care sector, we have had another sponsor licence revocation decision involving a large care home operator successfully judicially reviewed in the High Court. In R (New Hope Care Ltd) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2024]...
There is nothing wrong with the integrity of the process by which Educational Testing Service (“ETS”) identifies its English language test results as “invalid” or “questionable”, the Upper Tribunal has said. As a result, where ETS provides evidence indicating that the test relied upon by an individual was taken by...
The mantra of “safe and legal routes” is regularly repeated by the government when justifying increasingly draconian legislation in an attempt to prevent refugees from travelling to the UK under their own steam. The argument is that refugees should use these safe and legal routes instead of arriving in small...
The British National (Overseas) citizens immigration route opened on 31 January 2021. This article sets out the rules for the BNO visa scheme, including recent changes. The Home Office abbreviation is “BN(O)”, which we will use where it forms part of the official title of a route, but otherwise stick...
Welcome to the weekly Free Movement newsletter! What a week. After calling an election for 4 July, the Prime Minister said that no flights to Rwanda would take off before the election. There is no reason to believe that we will have anything other than a Labour government following that election and...
The Public Accounts Committee has published a report “Asylum Accommodation and UK-Rwanda Partnership” in which it criticises the Home Office in both of these areas. By the end of March this year, spending on the Rwanda scheme had reached £240 million. The plan to open four large scale accommodation centres...
The High Court has held that the decision to refuse to grant exceptional case funding for legal aid to a person applying to the Windrush compensation scheme was lawful. The case is R (Oji) v The Director of Legal Aid Casework [2024] EWHC 1281 (Admin). Background to the compensation scheme...
Immigration law is constantly changing and the Home Office updates its guidance documents accordingly. Sometimes you will need to look at an older version of the guidance that applied at a certain time but it is no longer on GOV.UK as it has been replaced with the new version. When...
After over two and a half years of children being held in inhumane conditions on Diego Garcia, the Supreme Court of the British Indian Ocean Territories has ruled that key safeguarding provisions of the 1989 Children Act apply to the territories. Background In September 2021, a group of Tamil asylum...
The Home Office has published statistics for the period January to March 2024 showing a marked drop in the grant rate for asylum cases, tens of thousands of EU Settlement Scheme applications rejected as invalid, and a fee waiver backlog that seems to be rapidly spiralling out of control. My...
In Onuzi (good character requirement: Sleiman considered) Albania [2024] UKUT 144 (IAC) the Upper Tribunal dunks on my old case of Sleiman: This certainly narrows down the available arguments in these citizenship deprivation cases. The Onuzi determination is a strange one, though. There’s no sign of recognition that the exercise...
