Last week, we at Safe Passage published our Routes to Safety report, which makes recommendations for a new compassionate and competent approach to dangerous journeys across the channel. Implementing our proposals could disrupt the smuggler’s business model, save lives and uphold the UK’s commitment to protect refugees. Safe routes work ...
Readers of this blog will have noticed that the fairness of the Home Office’s procedure for deciding who to send to Rwanda is not among the issues being argued in the Supreme Court in October. This post highlights the important findings made by the Court of Appeal on procedural fairness...
Last year 1,334 people came to the UK and claimed asylum based on their sexual orientation, amounting to 2% of all asylum claims. A lot of them are probably feeling quite frightened this morning after the Home Secretary has chosen to single them out for attack, as being undeserving of...
On the face of it, refugee status and humanitarian protection seem like two sides of the same coin. Both are a form of international protection granted to a person in need. Both result in a grant of five years’ permission to remain in the UK on a pathway to settlement...
In AB and NB v Secretary of State for the Home Department (PA/07865/20119), the First-tier Tribunal found that the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) was unable to provide “protection and assistance” to a severely disabled Palestinian child living in Lebanon. As a direct consequence of that he was...
In what seems to be a prelude to the introduction of the use of ionising radiation (x-rays) for non-medical reasons on children, the government has published the Justification Decision (Scientific Age Imaging) Regulations 2023. There is also a draft explanatory memorandum containing a statement by the Secretary of State for...
The Secretary of State will reduce judicial oversight of detention and increase her detention powers when more of the Illegal Migration Act 2023 comes into force on 28 September 2023. Those and other changes set out in the Illegal Migration Act 2023 (Commencement No. 1) Regulations 2023, published last night,...
The government was granted permission to appeal in the Rwanda litigation in July. This post provides an update on the current state of play ahead of the Supreme Court hearing. You can read Free Movement’s coverage of the Court of Appeal’s judgment here and here. In essence, the Court of...
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...
With the number of asylum claims on the rise across Europe and around the world, the discussion on safe routes for people seeking asylum is not unique to the UK. I thought it would useful to look at what processes other countries have in place for receiving refugees aside from...
The Home Office is reported to have reduced the notice period a successful asylum seeker is given to leave their asylum accommodation once they have been granted refugee status. It was 28 days and now it is reported to be just 7 days. If so, this just isn’t enough time for...
Following the outbreak of the conflict in Sudan earlier this year the UK government evacuated thousands of people. This included a number of Sudanese nationals, some of whom were single parents accompanying their British children. What their current entitlements and next steps are is unclear. There is no published...
We have been flagging up concerns about the Home Office use of withdrawals for a couple of months now. We have covered the changes to the immigration rules relating to the withdrawal of asylum claims that come into effect on 7 August 2023, and published a briefing on withdrawals. The...
The Home Secretary’s systematic and routine accommodation of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in hotels is unlawful, the High Court has held. The case, R (on the application of ECPAT UK) v Kent County Council and another [2023] EWHC 1953 (Admin), looks at what happens when local authorities don’t comply with their...
In the recent judgment R (HA and Ors) v SSHD [2023] EWHC 1876 (Admin) the High Court (Swift J) found that the Home Secretary failed to meet even her minimalist legal obligations to provide support to destitute asylum seekers. The details of the case make shocking reading, even for those...
In WAS (Pakistan) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2023] EWCA Civ 894, the Court of Appeal has given guidance on the lower standard of proof in asylum appeals. WAS claimed to be at risk because of his involvement with MQM-London, a UK-based faction of a Pakistani political...
The Home Office is increasingly treating asylum claims as being withdrawn. This seems to be a new policy intended to reduce the asylum backlog. The number of asylum decisions made by the Home Office at first glance appears to be increasing. When we look at the detail of the figures,...
An asylum-seeking mother and her four children were placed in inadequate hotel accommodation for over a year, the High Court has found. The case is R (on the application of SA) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2023] EWHC 1787 (Admin). It is a striking example of a...
The Home Office has, following a judicial review challenge for two claimants of Duncan Lewis, published new modern slavery statutory guidance which no longer requires a potential victim of trafficking and modern slavery to produce ‘objective’ evidence corroborating a credible account of their experiences in order to receive a positive...
On 17 July 2023, a new statement of changes to the Immigration Rules was published. As usual, it is accompanied by an Explanatory Memorandum. Also as usual, it is largely concerned with cracking down on those perceived as abusing immigration law. There are, though, one or two positive changes. Asylum...
The Home Secretary was entitled to refuse entry clearance to an Afghan interpreter accused of releasing sensitive information and threatening to kill coalition forces. That was the conclusion of the High Court in FMA and others v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2023] EWHC 1579 (Admin), the latest...
This post reflects on last week’s extraordinary Court of Appeal judgment on the Rwanda policy. You can read our initial take on this here. Appeal to the Supreme Court The government has already announced its intention to seek leave to appeal to the UK Supreme Court. The key issues that...
The majority of unaccompanied children who enter the UK to seek asylum do not bring with them evidence of their age. Because of this, the Home Office has a duty to carry out an initial assessment of their age to establish whether they are, or could be, children. The Home...
The Supreme Court has held that there was no legal obligation to consider the equality impact of excluding Palestinians from the UK’s resettlement scheme for refugees from Syria. The design of the scheme was therefore lawful. The case is R (on the application of Marouf) v Secretary of State for...
The Court of Appeal has found, by a majority, that the Rwanda plan is unlawful as Rwanda is not a sufficiently safe country. In short, the Rwandan authorities are not yet reliably able to sort genuine from non-genuine refugees, and therefore there is too great a risk that genuine refugees...
Potential victims of trafficking awaiting asylum support decisions during the first lockdown were wrongly denied the full payments to which they were entitled. So held the High Court in R (on the application of PM) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2023] EWHC 1551. The Claimant, PM, is...
The government yesterday published its economic impact assessment for the Illegal Migration Bill and its Rwanda plan. The assessment reveals that Rwanda will be paid approximately £105,000 per refugee received on top of the £120 million already paid and any other undisclosed payments. At least, this is the figure used in...
It has become fashionable for government ministers to refer to “bespoke” humanitarian schemes and such like, referring to programmes like those for Ukrainians and Hong Kongers. The illusory scheme for Afghans was once trumpeted as a “bespoke” scheme as well, but it has effectively been mothballed and some of those...
The High Court has decided it should not invoke its wardship jurisdiction in relation to missing and unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. In Article 39 v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2023] EWHC 1398 (Fam), Article 39, a charity promoting and protecting the rights of children in England who are...
Immigration Minister Robert Jenrick today announced that the government was dropping its “differentiated status” approach to refugees, introduced less than one year ago as the centrepiece of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022. The policy was to put refugees who arrived without prior permission on a ten year route to...
On 26 May, the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNHCR) published a report ‘Asylum Screening in the UK: An audit of the UK’s asylum intake, registration and screening procedures and recommendations for change’ which identifies a number of problem areas. They visited registration and screening locations across the UK between June...
The latest quarterly immigration statistics were published today. Most of the media focus is on net migration and the Office of National Statistics ONS report. Net migration turned out to be around 600,000 rather than the 700,000 or more that some had predicted. Here, though, we’re going to focus on...
Wednesday 10 May 2023 saw a few developments with the Illegal Migration Bill, as the second reading took place in the House of Lords, and the Equality Impact Assessment was published. We’ve summarised the key points below. Page contentsHouse of LordsEquality Impact AssessmentWhere is the Economic Impact Assessment?Next stages House...
The Illegal Migration Bill, the government’s answer to the ‘small boats crisis’, was proposed to Parliament on 7 March. Since then, it has faced fierce criticism from international organisations including the UN High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR), national refugee support organisations, those supporting victims of torture, children, trafficking victims and...
The government’s new Illegal Migration Bill is the latest in the long line of attempts to deal with refugee arrivals by making life difficult for them. In so doing, it sidesteps the real issues, the reality of both the facts of the refugee issue in the UK and where our...
This week news broke about a row between Westminister and the Senedd regarding the inclusion of care leavers who arrived in the UK as unaccompanied children seeking asylum in their Universal Basic Income Pilot after a letter from a number of Welsh ministers to the Justice Minister, Lord Bellamy was...
The government claims that refugees should use ‘safe and legal routes’ to come to the UK. This forms a crucial part of its rhetorical defence for the recently-introduced Illegal Migration Bill because the Bill will deny refugee protection in the UK to any who arrive by irregular routes, including crossing...
The Illegal Migration Bill paints a picture of irresponsible refugees who seem to delight in travelling illegally to the UK in dangerous small boats. Its claim to prevent refugees travelling to the UK by these illegal and dangerous routes is a laudable aim. But the story is not so straightforward....
