Top tips for making complex refugee family reunion applications
17 June 2025
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The current immigration rules on when a refugee may be joined by family members — often referred to as refugee family reunion — are woefully
The current immigration rules on when a refugee may be joined by family members — often referred to as refugee family reunion — are woefully
Asylum lawyers like me tend to focus on just one clause of the Refugee Convention: the definition of a refugee. This is the gateway to
The Court of Appeal has issued a welcome corrective to the tribunals, telling them not to impose an “unrealistic evidential burden” on asylum applicants who
The latest report from Dr Jo Wilding, “No Access to Justice 2” looks at the continuing immigration and asylum legal aid crisis. This is an
An appellant who is a Yemeni national who has lived in China since he was one year old has lost his appeal against the refusal
In my previous article, I outlined the precipitous fall in the rate of recognition for Afghan asylum claims following the change in the Home Office
The Court of Appeal has upheld a decision by the Home Office to refuse a certificate of travel to a woman granted leave to remain
In this post, we will look at who is eligible to apply under Appendix Child Relative (Sponsors with Protection) of the immigration rules, what are
The Court of Appeal has upheld a decision of the Upper Tribunal to allow the Home Secretary’s appeal against a First-tier Tribunal decision allowing the
The Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill has completed its committee stage in the House of Commons and report stage will take place on Monday
The Home Secretary has had an absolute howler in the Upper Tribunal, it is one of those decisions that is worth a read in full
The Court of Appeal has dismissed an appeal by an Albanian women in a protection claim where she initially succeeded in the First-tier Tribunal but
This post is intended for refugees (including those with humanitarian protection), their families and their friends trying to understand the rules on refugee family reunion.
On 15 April 2025, the Home Office published a new version of its country policy and information note (‘CPIN’) on social media, surveillance and sur
A Sudanese refugee has succeeded in challenging a negative trafficking decision after he was wrongly criticised for a lack of detail and supporting evidence for
After the ban on grants of leave to those in the inadmissibility process was lifted following the change in government last year, there has finally
Further submissions, sometimes referred to as a ‘fresh claim’ or ‘fresh asylum claim’, is a process for submitting a human rights or protection claim where
A Somali man who is at risk of harm from the Islamist Al-Shabaab group in his home area is not a refugee or entitled to
The Court of Appeal has dismissed an appeal against a decision by the Upper Tribunal that the First-tier Tribunal did not have jurisdiction to consider
In a decision on asylum support last year, the judge invited the Home Secretary to apply for judicial review of the tribunal so that guidance
Three individual claimants have succeeded in a judicial review claiming that they had been unlawfully accommodated at the former RAF base in Wethersfield. The court
The latest statement of changes to the immigration rules has been published, accompanied by an explanatory memorandum and a ministerial statement. A visa regime has
Claiming asylum is an important human right backed by the United Nations Refugee Convention and recognised by countries around the world. In order to make
The High Court has quashed a decision by the Home Office to refuse a trafficking claim on the grounds that the person had been kidnapped,
As anticipated in my article published in September 2024, the Home Office immigration statistics published on 27 February 2025 demonstrated a huge fall in the
The Court of Appeal has returned an appeal to the First-tier Tribunal to be determined for a third time after a series of errors made
In our latest write up on the people seeking asylum who were on Diego Garcia there was mention of the case of KP, who was
The Home Secretary has succeeded in an appeal to the Court of Appeal where the First-tier Tribunal’s decision was overturned for a failure to provide
The Upper Tribunal has recently dismissed a judicial review action involving a Turkish Kurdish family who were separated when attempting to cross the Channel. Before
The High Court has dismissed an appeal by the Home Secretary against an award of damages to a refugee in the amount of £98,757.04 in
There have been some important additions to pages 50 and 51 of the Good Character guidance (a comparison of the new and old versions is
Once the Home Secretary concludes that a refugee is a danger to national security she is entitled to revoke his refugee status. She does not
The Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill has landed, along with a written statement from the Home Secretary. The Bill weighs in at 57 clauses
The Home Office has recently updated its guidance on the streamlined process for children’s asylum applications. This policy was initially introduced to help with the
Appendix Statelessness replaced Part 14 of the immigration rules in January 2024. It provides a pathway for stateless people to obtain leave to remain in
The Home Office has settled the judicial review claims that seek an independent Article 3 ECHR compliant inquiry into events at Manston in 2022. The
A mother and her severely disabled child have been successful in obtaining a mandatory order for the Home Office to provide them with suitable accommodation
The Court of Appeal in Northern Ireland has dismissed an appeal challenging refusal of Schedule 10 accommodation on the grounds that the applicant did not
What should happen where young children are carried in a small boat to the United Kingdom and thereby separated from their parents in France? Should the
In order to access legal aid, a difficult enough feat as it is, people need to provide evidence of their financial situation. For most of
The current immigration rules on when a refugee may be joined by family members — often referred to as refugee family reunion — are woefully outdated and simply do not reflect the nature of modern families. Reform is long overdue. But in the meantime, it is feasible to make successful...
Asylum lawyers like me tend to focus on just one clause of the Refugee Convention: the definition of a refugee. This is the gateway to formal recognition as a refugee and is therefore of vital importance to any person seeking asylum. From this definition, set out at Article 1A(2) of...
The Court of Appeal has issued a welcome corrective to the tribunals, telling them not to impose an “unrealistic evidential burden” on asylum applicants who claim that they are subject to monitoring by their home government. The case is MH (Bangladesh) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2025]...
The latest report from Dr Jo Wilding, “No Access to Justice 2” looks at the continuing immigration and asylum legal aid crisis. This is an update to her 2022 report and includes a region by region analysis of demand and provision. In the 2022 report, London was the only region...
An appellant who is a Yemeni national who has lived in China since he was one year old has lost his appeal against the refusal of humanitarian protection on the grounds that he can return to China, despite the absence of evidence that China would grant him entry. The court...
In my previous article, I outlined the precipitous fall in the rate of recognition for Afghan asylum claims following the change in the Home Office policy position in October 2024. I noted that the immigration statistics indicated that 26 Afghan women had their asylum claims refused. It seemed unbelievable...
The Court of Appeal has upheld a decision by the Home Office to refuse a certificate of travel to a woman granted leave to remain on family grounds following an unsuccessful asylum claim. The claimant in R (KH) v The Secretary of State for the Home Department [2025] EWCA Civ...
In this post, we will look at who is eligible to apply under Appendix Child Relative (Sponsors with Protection) of the immigration rules, what are the requirements, what leave is granted if successful and routes to settlement. Appendix Child Relative (Sponsors with Protection) is a relatively niche route for children...
The Court of Appeal has upheld a decision of the Upper Tribunal to allow the Home Secretary’s appeal against a First-tier Tribunal decision allowing the appeal of a Vietnamese national on humanitarian protection grounds. The court held that the First-tier Tribunal had not given sufficient reasons for finding the appellant...
The Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill has completed its committee stage in the House of Commons and report stage will take place on Monday 12 May 2025. The Bill as first introduced has had a couple of amendments at committee stage, both introduced by the government. There are also...
The Home Secretary has had an absolute howler in the Upper Tribunal, it is one of those decisions that is worth a read in full if you have the time. It is a successful judicial review challenging a refusal to recognise further submissions as amounting to a fresh claim. This...
The Court of Appeal has dismissed an appeal by an Albanian women in a protection claim where she initially succeeded in the First-tier Tribunal but that decision was later overturned by the Upper Tribunal. Her asylum claim was based on a risk on return from former clients of her husband’s...
This post is intended for refugees (including those with humanitarian protection), their families and their friends trying to understand the rules on refugee family reunion. The requirements to be met are fairly straightforward and simple for children and partners who existed at the time the refugee fled their country of origin. These...
On 15 April 2025, the Home Office published a new version of its country policy and information note (‘CPIN’) on social media, surveillance and sur place activities in Iran. This replaced the previous version of the CPIN published in March 2022. It is a significant update, particularly considering that the...
A Sudanese refugee has succeeded in challenging a negative trafficking decision after he was wrongly criticised for a lack of detail and supporting evidence for his claim. The case is R (Alnoor) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2025] EWHC 922 (Admin). Background The claimant is a Sudanese...
After the ban on grants of leave to those in the inadmissibility process was lifted following the change in government last year, there has finally started to be some progress on deciding asylum claims. However early signs are that that the emphasis on fast decision making is coming at the...
Further submissions, sometimes referred to as a ‘fresh claim’ or ‘fresh asylum claim’, is a process for submitting a human rights or protection claim where a previous claim has been refused, withdrawn, treated as withdrawn or become appeal rights exhausted. It can be an effective tool for rectifying years of...
A Somali man who is at risk of harm from the Islamist Al-Shabaab group in his home area is not a refugee or entitled to humanitarian protection because he can reasonably relocate to Mogadishu. This is the decision of the Court of Appeal in ASJ (Somalia) v Secretary of State...
The Court of Appeal has dismissed an appeal against a decision by the Upper Tribunal that the First-tier Tribunal did not have jurisdiction to consider an appeal based on a grant of humanitarian protection that had not been made by the Home Secretary, on the grounds of a nationality that...
In a decision on asylum support last year, the judge invited the Home Secretary to apply for judicial review of the tribunal so that guidance could be provided to asylum support judges on jurisdiction in implicit withdrawal cases (i.e. where the Home Office has deemed an asylum claim withdrawn). The...
Three individual claimants have succeeded in a judicial review claiming that they had been unlawfully accommodated at the former RAF base in Wethersfield. The court also held that the Home Office had unlawfully breached the Public Sector Equality Duty. The case is TG & Ors v Secretary of State for...
The latest statement of changes to the immigration rules has been published, accompanied by an explanatory memorandum and a ministerial statement. A visa regime has been imposed on Trinidad and Tobago with immediate effect, I am pretty sure you can guess why. Details on that and many of the other...
Claiming asylum is an important human right backed by the United Nations Refugee Convention and recognised by countries around the world. In order to make this right a reality in practice, countries like the UK have set up systems by which people must apply for asylum. In this way, asylum...
The High Court has quashed a decision by the Home Office to refuse a trafficking claim on the grounds that the person had been kidnapped, which the decision maker said could not meet the trafficking definition. The case is R (AAM) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2025]...
As anticipated in my article published in September 2024, the Home Office immigration statistics published on 27 February 2025 demonstrated a huge fall in the grant rate for Afghan asylum claims in the last three months of 2024. This follows the change in the Home Office policy position in its...
The Court of Appeal has returned an appeal to the First-tier Tribunal to be determined for a third time after a series of errors made in a First-tier Tribunal decision was not dealt with by the Upper Tribunal. The court was clearly unimpressed, stating that “If the UT had carried...
In our latest write up on the people seeking asylum who were on Diego Garcia there was mention of the case of KP, who was excluded from the arrangements to bring most people to the UK as he had criminal convictions, although he had also been recognised as being in...
The Home Secretary has succeeded in an appeal to the Court of Appeal where the First-tier Tribunal’s decision was overturned for a failure to provide sufficient reasons for departing from a country guidance case, only for the Upper Tribunal to then fall into the same error. The case is Secretary...
The Upper Tribunal has recently dismissed a judicial review action involving a Turkish Kurdish family who were separated when attempting to cross the Channel. Before you continue reading this, I would recommend reading Colin’s excellent article on the interim order decision by the Court of Appeal, where he sets out...
The High Court has dismissed an appeal by the Home Secretary against an award of damages to a refugee in the amount of £98,757.04 in respect of her unlawful detention and breach of article 8 relating to the delay in granting her status. The case is Secretary of State for...
There have been some important additions to pages 50 and 51 of the Good Character guidance (a comparison of the new and old versions is here) that have the potential to block a large number of refugees from naturalising as British citizens, effective immediately. This is described in the changes...
Once the Home Secretary concludes that a refugee is a danger to national security she is entitled to revoke his refugee status. She does not have to go on to consider whether there are less intrusive measures that could be applied. The Home Secretary’s national security decision can only be...
The Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Bill has landed, along with a written statement from the Home Secretary. The Bill weighs in at 57 clauses (“sections” once it is an Act), two schedules and 74 pages. Let’s take a look. You can also read the Explanatory Notes for yourself if...
The Home Office has recently updated its guidance on the streamlined process for children’s asylum applications. This policy was initially introduced to help with the asylum backlog in 2023, the streamlined process has now been in place for almost two years and is no longer restricted to applications lodged prior...
Appendix Statelessness replaced Part 14 of the immigration rules in January 2024. It provides a pathway for stateless people to obtain leave to remain in the UK. The application is free of charge and leads to settlement after five years. The Home Office guidance on statelessness “Permission to stay as...
The Home Office has settled the judicial review claims that seek an independent Article 3 ECHR compliant inquiry into events at Manston in 2022. The claims were brought by individuals detained at Manston in autumn 2022 when there were widespread reports and concerns around overcrowding and very poor conditions, and...
A mother and her severely disabled child have been successful in obtaining a mandatory order for the Home Office to provide them with suitable accommodation as part of their asylum support. The case is R (AYW & Anor) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2024] EWHC 3291 (Admin)....
The Court of Appeal in Northern Ireland has dismissed an appeal challenging refusal of Schedule 10 accommodation on the grounds that the applicant did not have a bail address, which is what she was asking for by making the Schedule 10 application. The situation endorsed by the Court of Appeal...
What should happen where young children are carried in a small boat to the United Kingdom and thereby separated from their parents in France? Should the children be returned to France to be reunited with their parents there? Or should the parents be admitted to the United Kingdom to be reunited...
In order to access legal aid, a difficult enough feat as it is, people need to provide evidence of their financial situation. For most of those in the asylum system, that means asking Migrant Help for assistance. Below I have set out some of the issues and hopefully a recent...