The process for identifying and supporting survivors of trafficking has been seriously degraded over the past couple of years and in this article I look at the position in relation to grants of leave made to those people who have been identified as survivors of trafficking. Some recent decisions considering...
The Asylum Support Tribunal has found that there is a right of appeal against a decision to stop a person’s asylum support where their asylum claim has been deemed withdrawn by the Home Office, for example where the substantive asylum interview was missed. The Home Office guidance “Ceasing Section 95...
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,...
Following last year’s legacy backlog clearance exercise, the backlog of cases has shifted to either end of the asylum process. There are tens of thousands of cases that are sitting in the inadmissibility process and not even being considered, and then there are also tens of thousands of cases that...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
All successful applications for asylum or humanitarian protection in the UK result in the grant of five years leave to remain, on what is known as a “protection route”. People granted leave on a protection route are then eligible to apply for settlement on completion of those five years. Their...
The Upper Tribunal has found the guidance to be used those who cannot travel to enrol their biometrics because it is unsafe to be unlawful. The individual refusal decisions were also quashed. The linked cases are RM and others v Secretary of State for the Home Department JR-2024-LON-000082 and WM...
This blog explains why Asylum Aid continues to believe that the Home Office’s interpretation of the Safety of Rwanda Act as excluding consideration of “onward removal” (where someone is removed from Rwanda) claims is wrong and that this guidance is therefore unlawful. We believe that properly interpreted, the Act permits...
The latest modern slavery statistics have been published and show that the ‘immigration enforcement competent authority’ had made its lowest percentage of positive conclusive grounds decisions confirming that a person is recognised as a victim of trafficking since it was set up, with a recognition rate of 20.68% for the...
On Monday the Home Office updated the guidance documents relating to removals to Rwanda and retroactively amended the Rwanda agreement to include the possibility of sending failed asylum seekers there. This was done via a letter from the British High Commissioner in Rwanda to Rwanda’s Permanent Secretary Ministry of Foreign...
Following a legal challenge, the small group of Sri Lankan people seeking asylum in Diego Garcia have been granted bail so that they are able to access more of the island beyond the tiny encampment they were kept in previously. We have previously published a post providing the historical context...
Leigh Day, instructed by Asylum Aid, have today sent a pre action letter challenging the lawfulness of certain aspects of the Safety of Rwanda guidance that was published on Monday 29 April 2024. The pre action letter is being shared widely within the immigration law sector (see below) so that...
The Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration’s report on the Afghan relocation and resettlement schemes reveals yet another undisclosed pause on cases, this one relating to grants of entry clearance for those who met the requirements of the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP). Between October 2022 and March...
The second part of a challenge to the family reunion rules that exclude child refugees from bringing their family to the UK has been dismissed by the High Court. The case is R (DM) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees intervening) [2024]...
The Court of Appeal has rejected a claim that Afghan nationals have been unlawfully treated less favourably than Ukrainians when it comes to the requirement to enrol biometrics as part of an entry clearance application. The case is R (AB) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2024] EWCA...
In what is a day of enormous shame for any right thinking person in this country, the UK’s treaty with Rwanda has today been ratified which means that the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration Act) 2024 which received Royal Assent today is now in force. On 22 January 2024...
The Home Office has published its latest “ad hoc” statistics release, showing a dramatic increase in the number of Vietnamese people coming to the UK and a 24% increase in people detected crossing the Channel so far in 2024. The statistics were published to support the Prime Minister’s speech in...
Almost two years after changes were made by the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 to the standard of proof, we have our first reported decision from the Upper Tribunal on how the assessment of whether a person’s fear of persecution is “well-founded” should be carried out. The case is JCK...
The backlog of cases in the inadmissibility process was in the news again last week following senior Home Officials’ evidence session at the Public Accounts Committee on Monday. This article looks at legal arguments that can be made in relation to the Home Office’s delay in making admissibility decisions for...
During judicial review proceedings it has been disclosed that around 80 children were evacuated from Afghanistan and separated from their families and a new route is to be put in place to facilitate the reunion of these families shortly. The case is R (HR & Ors) v Secretary of State...
On 13 March 2024, in AUS v R [2024] EWCA Crim 322, the Court of Appeal quashed the 2010 conviction of a Somali citizen who was sentenced to 12 months’ imprisonment for possession of a false identity document, contrary to s25(1) of the Identity Cards Act 2006. The applicant was...
The Court of Appeal has told the Ministry of Defence that they must reconsider whether an Afghan former Supreme Court judge is eligible for resettlement to the UK under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP). This was following an unsuccessful appeal by the Home Secretary and the Defence Secretary...
In recent months two cohorts of young people, those granted ‘Calais leave’ and those granted leave under section 67 of the Immigration Act 2016, have begun to reach the end of five years’ limited leave to remain. The immigration rules currently provide a route to either further limited leave or...
The High Court has dismissed a judicial review raised by an Albanian national challenging a negative reasonable grounds (first stage) decision in his trafficking claim, finding that his employer did not have the intention to exploit him at the point of recruitment. The case is R (MT) v Secretary of...
This week the Sentencing Council published new draft sentencing guidelines for immigration offences within the Immigration Act 1971 and Identity Documents Act 2010. This includes offences expanded by the Nationality and Borders Act 2022. Previously, there had been no formal guidelines for these offences. The draft guidelines have been published...
The Home Office has updated its guidance on voluntary returns, now re-named voluntary departures which now includes the possibility of sending those who agree to a safe third country. Although not explicitly named in the guidance, the intention is clearly to try to get people to agree to go to...
The Home Office has updated its “Allocation of asylum accommodation” guidance so that a list of people who were previously excluded from the Bibby Stockholm, Napier and the other ex-Ministry of Defence sites and from having to share a bedroom, can now be accommodated in these places. The euphemism being...
As the government’s Rwanda plan continues to court controversy, there is one area of their policy which by their measures could be seen to be succeeding: their efforts to stop Albanians from seeking refuge in the UK. Since 2019, the Migrant and Refugee Children’s Legal Unit at Islington Law Centre...
A guidance change made in July 2023 is affecting the ability of the new-born babies of refugees to obtain refugee status. This is an issue that affects a limited group of people, namely those who have been granted refugee leave for five years, and have a child born in the...
