A lawyer is not merely a conduit through which their client’s grievances can be aired in court. The grievance must be formulated into a coherent and stateable case and presented in a professional, honest, and courteous manner. The Solicitors Regulation Authority requiressolicitors in England and Wales to refrain from any “attempt...
The default position when EU law no longer applies in the UK is to render EU citizens unlawfully resident. The proposed “settled status” scheme has been designed to prevent this, but perhaps its defining characteristic when compared with the rights available under EU law is that it does not come...
A struck-off solicitor has failed in a High Court bid to overturn the decision of a disciplinary tribunal to ban him from legal practice. The case is Ip v Solicitors Regulation Authority [2018] EWHC 957. Immigration specialist Vay Sui Ip was struck off following a decision of the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal...
Much excitement on the BBC’s Today programme and elsewhere in the media about “a document that emerged overnight” which proves that the Home Office sets targets for removing people who have no right to remain in the UK. This matters because yesterday the Secretary of State, Amber Rudd, and a...
Yesterday afternoon, the Home Affairs committee of MPs had before it a selection of the nation’s newspaper editors. The subject of questioning: “whether there is an issue with treatment of minority groups in the print media”. Anyone who has glanced at the headlines about immigration over the past decade or...
Operation Nexus, a little-known arrangement between the police and Home Office, is changing the UK’s approach to deportation. The scheme means that EU citizens are being deported from the UK despite not being convicted of any crime. The details of how Nexus works varies from place to place, but it...
In the case of C-353/16 MP v Secretary of State for the Home Department, decided yesterday, the Court of Justice of the European Union has found that A person who has in the past been tortured in his country of origin is eligible for ‘subsidiary protection’ if he faces a...
What is the standard of proof for immigration applications? Both lawyers and non-lawyers are entitled to find that question baffling. Non-lawyers because it’s jargon, but the standard of proof basically means: how sure does the Home Office have to be before it accepts that someone is entitled to a visa,...
The Court of Appeal has dismissed as academic an appeal on the right of non-British children to housing. The case is Ismail & Anor v London Borough of Newham [2018] EWCA Civ 665. Had the appeal been entertained, it would have determined whether children born in the UK but without...
In Ribeli v Entry Clearance Officer, Pretoria [2018] EWCA Civ 611, the Court of Appeal reaffirmed the “rigorous and demanding” nature of the adult dependent relative rules, following the judgment in BRITCITS v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2017] EWCA Civ 368. Proving that you have an emotional...
Not a huge surprise, this one. The official headnote for Williams (scope of “liable to deportation”) [2018] UKUT 116 (IAC): (1) A person who has been deported under a deportation order that remains in force is a person who is liable to deportation within the meaning of section 3 of...
Lord Justice Irwin has labelled the Immigration Rules a “disgrace” in the latest example of judicial disquiet over the complexity and poor drafting of the bedrock immigration regulations. Speaking earlier this week, the Court of Appeal judge hit out at “obscurity” and “cannibalistic drafting” in legislation, of which he said...
Like Commonwealth citizens unable to pay for residence cards, children entitled to register for British citizenship are prevented from taking up their rightful status in the UK by swingeing Home Office fees, write Solange Valdez-Symonds and Steve Valdez-Symonds. The Home Office fee for residence cards has been one part of...
A high-profile firm of immigration solicitors has been shut down by the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA). The regulator announced the closure on 18 April of Malik Law Chambers, which has two offices in London and one in Birmingham. Giving reasons for its decision, the SRA said: There is reason to suspect...
Role: Legal officer Contract: Permanent Location: Manchester Part-Time: 14 hours per week Salary: £13,590 p.a. pro-rata (full-time equivalent salary £33,975) plus generous holiday entitlement, pension scheme and group life assurance Job Ref: R19 Since 1985 Freedom from Torture has been the only UK human rights organization dedicated to treating and...
On 10 April 2018, Advocate General Bobek delivered his Opinion in C-89/17 Secretary of State for the Home Department v Banger, following a reference made to the Court of Justice of the European Union, by the former President of the Upper Tribunal, McCloskey J. There were four questions referred to...
New rules on immigration from the EU after Brexit are likely to affect lower-skilled workers most, according to an independent economist who advises the government on migration policy. Professor Alan Manning told MPs this afternoon that, judging by the immigration system of other countries, a post-Brexit system is more likely...
The Upper Tribunal has in AS (Safety of Kabul) Afghanistan CG [2018] UKUT 118 (IAC) given new country guidance in cases concerning removal to Kabul. The new guidance covers two main areas of concern. The first is the risk, on return to Kabul, from the Taliban. The second focuses on...
As explained in our detailed piece on the plight of long-resident Commonwealth citizens, free legal advice used to be available for those making immigration applications. Before it was scrapped in April 2013, this legal help was available to the “Windrush children” when applying for documents to confirm their status in...
Six months after the release of the Advocate General’s non-binding Opinion in the joined cases of C-316/16 B v Land Baden-Württemberg and C-424/16 Secretary of State for the Home Department v Franco Vomero, the Court of Justice of the European Union has today handed down its final judgment. The case revolved around the interpretation of article 28(3)(a) of Directive 2004/38/EC:...
AJ (s 94B: Kiarie and Byndloss questions) Nigeria [2018] UKUT 115 (IAC). Not much to say on this one as the headnote is self explanatory: (1) In the light of Kiarie and Byndloss v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2017] UKSC 42, the First-tier Tribunal should adopt a...
Nearly three years after the main appeal provisions of the Immigration Act 2014 commenced, the Upper Tribunal has turned its attention to the question lying at the heart of almost all appeals lodged since then: what is a human rights appeal anyway? There are two new cases which more or...
We are told repeatedly by UK politicians that EU citizenship is too expansive; it confers too many rights to encourage too much freedom of movement to too many people. This is why The British People voted to leave in the 2016 referendum, we are told. It is refreshing to read...
Several cases have come to light in recent weeks and months of the treatment of Commonwealth citizens who arrived in the UK in the 1950s and 1960s. Unable to provide evidence of their right to reside in the UK, these legal immigrants are losing jobs, being detained, and being denied...
Migration policy experts have warned that the system of registering EU citizens to stay in the UK after Brexit risks excluding the most vulnerable, who will end up as unlawfully resident if they fail to register or are turned down. A briefing from the influential Migration Observatory at the University...
In the wide-ranging and somewhat sorry case of El Gazzaz v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWCA Civ 532 the Court of Appeal has confirmed the strength of the presumption in favour of deporting foreign criminals. Criminal convictions and mental ill-health Sherif El Gazzaz, an Egyptian national,...
Official headnote to Yussuf (meaning of “liable to deportation”) [2018] UKUT 117 (IAC): Section 32 of the UK Borders Act 2007 impliedly amends section 3(5)(a) of the Immigration Act 1971 by (a) removing the function of the Secretary of State of deeming a person’s deportation to be conducive to the...
The Upper Tribunal has confirmed and applied the earlier case of Mahmud (S.85 NIAA 2002 – ‘new matters’) [2017] UKUT 488 (IAC) on what constitutes a “new matter” for the purpose of an appeal. In short, it seems any new fact not previously considered by the Home Office will be...
Welcome to the February 2018 edition of the Free Movement immigration update podcast. This month I look at some legal developments with Brexit and review no less than three Supreme Court decisions on immigration, nationality and detention. There have also been some case law on the Points Based System, which...
Lord Justices Hickinbottom, Kitchin and Coulson have delivered an interesting judgment concerning the free-standing balancing exercise of Article 8 ECHR in the context of a leave curtailment. The case is Tikka v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWCA Civ 632. The Court of Appeal found that the...
MK and Gega v R [2018] EWCA Crim 667 is about who should face the burden of proof when a criminal defendant relies on the new “victim of slavery/trafficking” defence in the Modern Slavery Act 2015. In the first appellate judgment on this issue, the Court of Appeal has ruled...
Back in July 2015, the Upper Tribunal delivered a puzzling judgment in the case of R (Bilal Ahmed) v SSHD (EEA/s 10 appeal rights: effect (IJR) [2015] UKUT 436 (IAC). The nub of the decision was that where the Secretary of State refuses an application on the basis that the...
Secretary of State for the Home Department v Said [2018] EWCA Civ 627 is about how long the Home Office can delay making an immigration decision before the applicants can successfully claim for damages under the Human Rights Act 1998. The Home Office was appealing a decision from the High...
