All Articles: Asylum

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...

21st June 2024
BY Colin Yeo

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...

20th June 2024
BY Colin Yeo

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...

19th June 2024
BY Larry Lock

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...

18th June 2024
BY Colin Yeo

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...

17th June 2024
BY colinyeo

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...

5th June 2024
BY Sonia Lenegan

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...

31st May 2024
BY Sonia Lenegan

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...

24th May 2024
BY Kristen Allison

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...

23rd May 2024
BY Sonia Lenegan

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...

23rd May 2024
BY Philippa Roffey

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...

20th May 2024
BY Sonia Lenegan

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...

17th May 2024
BY Alison Pickup

As I explained in a previous blog, in its June 2023 judgment in AAA & Others v SSHD, the Court of Appeal accepted Asylum Aid’s case that, in a majority of cases, the seven day period allowed by the Home Office for those in detention to respond to a notice...

16th May 2024
BY Alison Pickup

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...

16th May 2024
BY Sonia Lenegan

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...

15th May 2024
BY Sonia Lenegan

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...

14th May 2024
BY Guy Atoun

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...

3rd May 2024
BY Sonia Lenegan

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...

3rd May 2024
BY Isaac Shaffer

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]...

2nd May 2024
BY Sonia Lenegan

I have set out below what the legal process is for sending a person to Rwanda following the Safety of Rwanda (Asylum and Immigration) Act 2024, which received Royal Assent on 25 April and came into force the same day. I have looked only at the law as it currently...

30th April 2024
BY Sonia Lenegan

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...

29th April 2024
BY Sonia Lenegan

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...

25th April 2024
BY Sonia Lenegan

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...

25th April 2024
BY Sonia Lenegan

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...

23rd April 2024
BY Sonia Lenegan

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...

22nd April 2024
BY Monika Glowacka

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...

15th April 2024
BY Sonia Lenegan

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...

9th April 2024
BY Colin Gregory

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...

5th April 2024
BY Sonia Lenegan

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...

4th April 2024
BY Daniel Rourke

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...

2nd April 2024
BY Francesca Sella

As reported last week, the Irish High Court has held that the decision to put the UK on the list of safe third countries to return people seeking asylum to has been held unlawful. The case is A & anor v The Minister for Justice, Ireland and the Attorney General...

28th March 2024
BY Sonia Lenegan

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...

22nd March 2024
BY Victoria Taylor

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...

21st March 2024
BY Katherine Soroya

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...

14th March 2024
BY Sonia Lenegan

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...

13th March 2024
BY Richard Crellin

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...

8th March 2024
BY Stewart MacLachlan

This is another successful challenge from a former Afghan judge who was unlawfully excluded from the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy scheme (ARAP). The case is MP1, R (On the Application Of) v Secretary of State for Defence [2024] EWHC 410 (Admin). Background MP1 worked as a criminal defence lawyer...

7th March 2024
BY Sonia Lenegan

This is our write up of the first of the Home Secretary’s recent dump of the much delayed reports from the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration. The one point I will make from the outset is that anyone who is working on Albanian claims should read the relevant...

6th March 2024
BY Sonia Lenegan

A few days before the two-year anniversary of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the UK government announced a series of sweeping changes to the Ukraine schemes, giving just four hours’ notice of their implementation. Among the most significant changes are the closure of the Ukraine Family Scheme, and a new...

4th March 2024
BY Dmitri Macmillen

Following a request from the Chairs of the Public Accounts and Home Affairs Committees, the National Audit Office has published a report on the costs to date of setting up the Migration and Economic Development Partnership with Rwanda. The report also looks at the basis on which future costs would...

1st March 2024
BY Sonia Lenegan

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