When I first started blogging I was really an oddity for being a lawyer that would effectively self-publish. People couldn’t quite work out why I was doing it and assumed that I was some sort of PR-hungry attention junkie. There were some people who thought that it was inappropriate for...
Today is the deadline for employers with 250 or more employees to publish calculations showing the size of the pay gap between their male and female workers. The gender pay gap is the percentage difference between the average hourly earnings for men and women; men earn 18.4% more than women...
The judgment of the European Court of Human Rights in T.C.E. v Germany (application no. 58681/12) has a whiff of Groundhog Day. For the second time in just over six months the court found that a Nigerian national convicted of drug-related crimes could not prevent deportation by relying on his...
Here’s your round-up of the immigration and asylum stories that made national headlines this week. This is the last instalment of this round-up as a standalone article. As explained in the response to the Free Movement reader survey, these weekly posts are an attempt to meet demand for more general...
The Home Office has failed to stick to claimed improvements in how it treats child refugees in the past few years, according to the independent immigration inspector. David Bolt’s inspection of how the Home Office considers the best interests of unaccompanied asylum seeking children, published yesterday, notes that the Home...
The momentous decision to begin Brexit in March 2017 was announced the previous October, when Theresa May made her first speech as Prime Minister to the Conservative Party conference. For all the impressions of chaos in between — including the sound and fury of the Miller litigation, in which the...
I’ve blogged previously about my concern for EU citizens falling through the cracks in terms of their post-Brexit residence and citizenship rights. Some of these worries are now articulated in a more formal way in two legal briefings undertaken for the Eurochildren in Brexiting Britain project at the University of...
Government measures aimed at stopping irregular migrants from renting a home are not being properly evaluated, the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration has found. The controversial Right to Rent scheme is “yet to demonstrate its worth as a tool to encourage immigration compliance, with the Home Office failing...
The Court of Appeal in Secretary of State for the Home Department v MS (Pakistan) [2018] EWCA Civ 594 looked at whether the Upper Tribunal can second-guess the decision of the government to reject someone’s application to be considered a victim of human trafficking. It found that the tribunal can...
[Editor’s note: this article is now largely superseded by new rules on settlement for Turkish nationals from 6 July 2018.] A new version of the Home Office guidance on applications from self-employed Turkish businesspersons for leave under the Turkish European Communities Association Agreement (ECAA), commonly known as the “Ankara Agreement”,...
The Court of Appeal in Secretary of State for the Home Department v (OP) Jamaica [2018] EWCA Civ 316 dealt with a deportation appeal in the context of assessing the weight to be given to Article 8 and the best interests of children. The judgment echoes previous decisions, in that...
Immigrants from other EU countries do not reduce average wages for UK-born workers. So said the Migration Advisory Committee (MAC), a crack team of independent economists that advises the government on immigration policy, in an interim report published today. There is some evidence that the net effect of immigration is...
In the recently reported case of Elsakhawy (immigration officers: PACE) [2018] UKUT 86 (IAC), the Upper Tribunal dismissed an appeal concerning the applicability of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE) to immigration officers exercising powers of “pastoral” interview. PACE is the law which safeguards the rights of those...
On 19 March the European Union and the UK published the impressively named Draft Agreement on the Withdrawal of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland from the European Union and the European Atomic Energy Community. In other words, a draft Brexit divorce agreement. This blog post will...
In the recently published case of MT and ET (child’s best interests; ex tempore pilot) Nigeria [2018] UKUT 88 (IAC), the Upper Tribunal looked again at the balancing exercise between a child’s best interests and the public interest when deciding whether it is reasonable to expect a child to leave...
Here’s your round-up of the immigration and asylum stories that made national headlines this week. Refugee fostering questions The Mail says that the immigration system has failed in the case of Ahmed Hassan, the 18-year-old Parsons Green bomber, who is said to have admitted links with IS to Home Office officials shortly...
A recent case shows that practitioners should beware the Home Office’s use of consent orders in judicial review claims, write Kim Renfrew and Naga Kandiah of MTC & Co. Solicitors. Our client SP is an asylum seeker of Sri Lankan origin. SP submitted further evidence to the Home Office, to...
A quick note on a recent asylum judgment in Scotland — nothing earth-shattering in it, our friends at McGill & Co tell me, but a reminder to be on the alert for multiple misstatements of the threshold for success in decision letters rejecting further submissions. Paragraph 353 of the Immigration...
The number of cases of deprivation of British citizenship has risen sharply in recent years. For an in-depth look at the issues, see my earlier post on The rise of modern banishment: deprivation and nullification of British citizenship. The increasing use of the power by the Secretary of State has...
Campaigners seeking to confirm whether the UK’s Article 50 notification triggering Brexit can be unilaterally revoked are one step closer to getting a decision from the Court of Justice of the European Union. Yesterday the Inner House of the Court of Session granted permission to proceed in Wightman and others...
A pan-European alliance of NGOs has launched a new database allowing for easy comparison of how different European countries protect people left without citizenship of any country due to quirks in nationality law. The Statelessness Index covers a dozen European countries, including the United Kingdom. The European Network on Statelessness...
Businesses across the UK began receiving notification emails last week from the Home Office confirming that their applications for restricted certificates of sponsorship had been approved. This is because they had met an as yet unpublished points threshold. The Home Office has saved the bad news for today. Yet again there...
On 23 February 2018, the Home Office issued new guidance on dealing with applications for leave to remain on the basis of family life as a partner or parent or on the basis of private life, on a ten-year route to settlement. Under the heading “changes from last version of...
The Home Affairs Committee of MPs has announced that it is broadening an existing enquiry into the treatment of migrants held at Brook House detention centre to look at the detention system more widely. The influential committee, which is headed up by Labour heavyweight Yvette Cooper, said on Friday afternoon...
Short and sweet is the best way to describe the High Court’s decision in BS v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWHC 454 (Admin). It comes as a useful reminder that whether detention is “reasonable” depends on all the circumstances of the case. In particular, the risk of a...
Here’s your round-up of the immigration and asylum stories that made national headlines this week. Far-right activists denied entry Last weekend, the Evening Standard and Mail picked up on the travails of three far-right YouTube stars excluded from the UK on the ground that their presence was not conducive to the...
A short Statement of Changes in Immigration Rules HC895 was laid yesterday, 15 March 2018. It makes minor changes to the Rules to take effect on 6 April. The explanatory memorandum summarises the tweaks as being to: Ensure that an asylum claim can be deemed inadmissible, and not be substantively...
The Ganges and Gurkha is the 60th most popular restaurant in Plymouth. It serves Nepalese and Indian food, and was shortlisted for the British Curry awards in 2013. In 2015, it had a Tier 2 sponsor licence, meaning that it could sponsor workers from overseas to come and work in...
A law centre solicitor who took money from clients seeking help with immigration and asylum problems has accepted his striking off the role of solicitors. Andrew John Puddicombe was employed by Gloucester Law Centre until November 2015, when management discovered that for three years he had been “charging clients on...
A group of charities and NGOs have launched a new guide on immigrants’ rights. It places with particular emphasis on coping with hostile environment measures designing to make life intolerable for undocumented migrants. Know Your Rights: A Guide for Migrants promises to help migrants “understand your rights in a situation where immigration rules...
Every few years another “good character” nationality case makes it to court. Usually they arise in the context of adults applying for naturalisation as British citizens at the Home Secretary’s discretion under section 6 of the British Nationality Act 1981, and invariably they concern criminal convictions (except for one, which...
The first round of immigration checks on migrants’ current accounts took place in January, with banks being required to check the immigration status of their customers against a Home Office database. Those flagged up as being in the UK unlawfully face having their account frozen or closed. Naturally enough, there...
The independent prison inspector has raised the alarm over the continued detention of migrants who the Home Office accepts have been tortured. A scathing inspection report also found “considerable failings” in safety and respect for detainees at the “prison-like” Harmondsworth Immigration Removal Centre near Heathrow. HM Chief Inspector of Prisons,...
On 1 March the Court of Appeal looked at Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights in the context of a Tier 1 (Entrepreneur) appeal. Although the appeal was dismissed, the court confirmed that running a business may amount to private life for the purposes of Article 8....
