This case is an unlawful detention claim based on shocking failures by the Home Office to comply with rules on how victims of torture and trafficking should be treated. In R (SW) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWHC 2684 (Admin), the High Court has ruled that...
I’m at a conference on EU free movement law today, organised by the Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association. One of the many useful pieces of information I’ve picked up already is about rights of appeal for extended family members of EU citizens who are denied residence cards. This issue has a...
The Supreme Court has today handed down judgment in four linked cases all concerning the best interests of children who themselves face removal from the UK or whose parent faces removal from the UK. The case is likely to be referred to as KO (Nigeria) and Others v Secretary of...
The Guardian has already reported this case as “Home Office ordered to pay damages to sex-trafficking victim”, but on Bailii it is simply R (ZV) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWHC 2725 (Admin). The media attention is due to the horrifying facts: the claimant ZV says...
About 18 months ago, the Home Office announced that refugees would no longer get indefinite leave to remain automatically after being in the UK for five years. Officials are now supposed to review whether the refugee still needs the protection of the British government: All those who apply for settlement...
The Judicial Appointments Commission is advertising for 41 new salaried judges to fill vacancies in the immigration and asylum chamber of the First-tier Tribunal. The salary is an attractive £108,171 (slightly more in London). The scale of this recruitment drive is unprecedented in recent times. The last set of salaried...
So says the Upper Tribunal in PA (Protection claim, Respondent’s enquiries, Bias) [2018] UKUT 337 (IAC); at least if your confidentiality is preserved. Officials checked Bangladeshi police records for evidence of persecution PA, a Bangladeshi national, claimed asylum in April 2016 on the basis that he was an active member...
This case demonstrates that possession of a British passport is precarious. Having a passport is a privilege, not a right, and the Home Secretary can exercise his power under the royal prerogative to cancel a passport if he thinks it is in the public interest. In B & Anor v...
In AS (Guinea) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWCA Civ 2234, the Court of Appeal has in effect rebuffed an attempt by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to make it easier to establish statelessness. The court ruled that the standard of proof for determining a...
Welcome to the September 2018 edition of the Free Movement immigration update podcast. We tried something a bit different this month. CJ and I ran the podcast together in a more conversational style. To keep the length reasonable we’ve focussed in on fewer subjects but covered them in a bit...
In SR (subsisting parental relationship – s117B(6)) Pakistan 2018 UKUT 3345 (IAC), the Upper Tribunal examines the various pieces of law relevant to deciding whether someone who has a child in the UK should be allowed to stay here. The case is helpful for two reasons: The Home Office’s approach...
In ES (s82 NIA 2002, Negative NRM) [2018] UKUT 335 (IAC) a victim of trafficking from Albania had been assessed by the Home Office not to be a victim of trafficking under the National Referral Mechanism. Previous cases have held that the tribunal is effectively fixed with the NRM trafficking...
The Home Office has published a new policy document entitled Inadmissibility: EU grants of asylum, first country of asylum and safe third country concepts, all about non-Dublin third country cases. It covers Immigration Rules 345A-D on asylum claims where the claimant has: Already been granted protection in another EU country...
C‑652/16 Nigyar Rauf Kaza Ahmedbekova and Rauf Emin Ogla Ahmedbekov v Zamestnik-predsedatel na Darzhavna agentsia za bezhantsite is a novel attempt to introduce the status of being involved in a case before the European Court of Human Rights as a ground on which refugee status can be claimed. The Court...
I’ve been working on a submission to the Windrush lessons learned review. The final date for submission of evidence is 19 October 2018 and I’d urge anyone interested in immigration policy to consider putting in a response, no matter how short. I’ll be sending in this submission, with any amendments,...
A new statement of changes to the Immigration Rules was laid on 10 October 2018. There is some very welcome news, including more flexibility given to caseworkers on whether and when they can write to applicants to ask for missing documents. (Whether they will in practice or still refuse for...
The Home Office has agreed to ask the independent Prisons and Probation Ombudsman (PPO) to carry out an investigation into the abuse of migrants held at Brook House detention centre. The decision has been described as a “major U-turn” by Duncan Lewis Solicitors, which says the department conceded the investigation...
Today the Home Office announced a new statement of changes to the Immigration Rules and confirmed that the Immigration Health Surcharge will go from £200 to £400 in December. A link to the full statement of changes is here and a summary of the changes from the immigration minister is here....
The Home Office will have no idea how many EU residents are left undocumented by Brexit because it does not collect or release the necessary data, a leading immigration policy expert has warned. Madeleine Sumption said yesterday that the government has no plans to find out how many of the...
The appeal of Orhan Mendirez [2018] CSIH 65 is an interesting judgment from the Inner House in which both the Upper Tribunal and First-tier Tribunal come in for criticism. Both failed to approach their decision-making task, in an appeal focused on Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights,...
Immigration law firm Lupins has ceased trading after getting into financial difficulties. The London firm, well known in the immigration sector, halted operations from 28 September and has handed over its client files to Duncan Lewis, which has also taken on some ex-Lupins staff. We understand that Lupins has been...
Thousands of people may have been unlawfully held in immigration removal centres in recent years, the court of appeal has ruled. This opening sentence from a Guardian article the other day refers to the case of R (Hemmati & Ors) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWCA...
This is the second of two Court of Appeal cases this year about whether the Home Office behaved unlawfully towards vulnerable child asylum seekers during and after the demolition of the Calais refugee camp in 2016. The first appeal, R (Citizens UK) v SSHD [2018] EWCA Civ 1812, concerned children...
Charity Help Refugees, supported by the AIRE Centre, has partly succeeded in an appeal challenging the government’s implementation of the “Dubs amendment”. The amendment, which passed into law as section 67 of the Immigration Act 2016, requires the Home Office to bring lone refugee children from mainland Europe to the...
After months of uncertainty we finally have a picture emerging of what the post-Brexit immigration system will look like. We have known for some time that after we leave the EU on 29 March 2019, the plan is to enter a transition period until 31 December 2020 which will see...
Sajid Javid delivered a speech today at the Conservative party conference that is likely to generate headlines for what he had to say on immigration, integration and citizenship. Upon closer inspection, there is less substance to these pronouncements than meets the eye and nothing on serious issues like child registration...
The whole purpose of the hostile environment is to exert indirect immigration control over migrants through employers, landlords, banks and public services. This is seen as an alternative to direct enforcement the old fashioned way, through arrests, detention and enforced removal. We saw in our post yesterday that direct enforcement...
“The government is cracking down harder on both illegal and legal migrants.” “The government does not control immigration.” These two contrasting statements are the prevailing yet paradoxical narratives on immigration in the United Kingdom today. An analysis of recent Home Office enforcement statistics suggests that neither offers an accurate picture...
Welcome to the August 2018 edition of the Free Movement immigration update podcast. This month I start on two subjects I’ve always been interested in, refusals of visit visa applications and the power to deprive people of their British citizenship. Both came to public attention in August due to media...
A British citizen can be deprived of his citizenship if he shows disloyalty to the state, the Court of Appeal has found in the case of Pham v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWCA Civ 2064. The case is interesting, thought-provoking and concerning in equal measure. Taking...
Last week the Scottish Court of Session agreed to make a reference to the Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxembourg to determine whether the UK’s notice that it is leaving the EU under Article 50 can be cancelled. The case, formally known as Wightman & Others v...
Judge Geraint Jones QC is well known to lawyers appearing at the Hatton Cross immigration tribunal hearing centre. In the case of Ortega (remittal; bias; parental relationship) [2018] UKUT 298 (IAC) the Upper Tribunal has rejected claims that one of his determinations showed bias against an appellant. Amongst other things...
Interesting new report from Jonathan Thomas of the Social Market Foundation called Take Back Control? This report reveals the true extent of the UK government’s control over immigration and makes the case for greater political honesty about that control. The impression given to the UK public has been of an...
