Resources have been published by Refugee Action to assist those who have received one of the new asylum questionnaires under the Home Office’s streamlined process. You can read more in detail about what to do with the questionnaire, how to fill it i ...

The Home office has published new guidance introducing a streamlined process to deal with child asylum applications. The policy explained in the guidance apparently intends to help the Home Office fulfil the commitment made by Rishi Sunak to clear the ...

The short answer is that we do not know. But it is possible to make some informed guesses. In this post I try to do just that, based on a Twitter thread from a few days ago and some feedback from that. Evidence on refugee decision-making The evidence ...

Yesterday, the Court of Appeal handed down a judgment dealing with applications for permission to appeal on grounds refused by the High Court. An annex to yesterday’s judgment lists the grounds granted permission by the High Court. Permission to app ...

As the House of Common’s second reading of the Illegal Migration Bill takes place today, this post looks at the detention provisions in clauses 11-14 and what they mean for individuals arriving in the UK. You can read Colin’s analysis of the Bill ...

The Illegal Migration Bill was published yesterday. You can access the Bill here and the Explanatory Notes here. While it remains a Bill, the individual provisions are referred to as clauses and once it becomes an Act — as it surely will — ...

To try to reduce the asylum decision backlog, the Home Office has introduced a “streamlined” process, including a questionnaire to be completed, in English, by individuals from Afghanistan, Eritrea, Syria, Yemen and Libya who claimed asylum before ...

The Court of Appeal has granted refugee status in a case turning on the credibility of the appellant’s evidence. MAH (Egypt) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2023] EWCA Civ 216 provides helpful guidance on the standard of proof in asylu ...

Quarterly immigration statistics released last week show the asylum backlog has hit a record high as 160,919 asylum seekers await an initial asylum decision, quadruple the number awaiting an initial decision at the end of 2019. In December 2022, follo ...

The latest quarterly immigration statistics are out. I’m focussing here on what the figures reveal about the system, including the backlog, arrivals, resettlement, grant rate, modern slavery referrals, detention and removals. Backlog The asylum ...

In December, Asylos and the Dutch Council for Refugees jointly published two country of origin information reports on Russia, focusing on the treatment of military deserter and of political dissidents. These were published in response to two reports b ...

The Upper Tribunal has confirmed that a recognised victim of trafficking who is also an asylum seeker, partly fearing re-trafficking on return as well as political persecution, should have been granted permission to stay (leave to remain) whilst their ...

One of the changes to immigration law made by the government in response to the sharp increase in small boat crossings was the creation of a ten year route to settlement for refugees. This followed the commencement of the Nationality and Borders ...

On 1 February 2023, the Court of Appeal heard an appeal against a preliminary ruling that asylum seekers can be prosecuted for arriving in the UK without a valid entry clearance. The case is R v. Mohamed and others. The appeal was brought on behalf of ...

The Home Office’s new policy temporary permission to stay for victims of trafficking and slavery was published on 30 January 2023. It accompanies the new appendix to the Immigration Rules of the same name, which was published on 18 October 2022 and ...

The system of legal aid for asylum seekers in the UK is broken. The legal advice and representation available is becoming so inadequate that it may breach the state’s human rights obligations and will inevitably lead to significant miscarriages ...

In yet another Afghan evacuation case, the court in KBL v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2023] EWHC 87 (Admin) looked at whether the guidance issued for the benefit of potential beneficiaries of the evacuation, known as “Operation Pitti ...

There have been many stories over the last few years about the reasons asylum seekers risk their lives crossing the Channel to come to the UK. If they are willing to do this, many people ask, then what is the point of making life more difficult for th ...

This article reviews some common cross-cultural pitfalls between legal representatives and young people claiming asylum. It also provides some ideas on how to mitigate cultural misunderstandings. Going into your initial meeting, a basic understanding ...

On 16 January 2023 there was a High Court hearing to deal with all matters following on from its ruling published on 19 December 2022. You can you can read more about the case and its implications here and here. You can find a full copy of the judgmen ...

The fall of Kabul in August 2021 prompted an emergency evacuation of around 15,000 people eligible for repatriation or relocation in the UK. Within weeks, amid intense criticism of the UK government’s mishandling of the situation and leadership fail ...

Yesterday, the interim Age Estimation Science Advisory Committee report on the evaluation methods used to assist in assessing the age of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children was published. In October 2021, Priti Patel threatened to use x-rays to veri ...

Those following the law around the prosecution of arrival in small boats may be interested in the ruling from the preparatory hearing in R v Mohamed and others. The purpose of the hearing was to provide a clear ruling on points of law that are likely ...

In a powerful judgment given on 21 December 2022, the High Court ordered the Secretary of State for the Home Department to immediately increase the weekly support payments made to asylum seekers to £45. This is the largest ever single increase in the ...

Now that the High Court has decided that the Rwanda policy is lawful, at least at a general level, many people will be wondering when the government will attempt another removal flight. This question will be no doubt be causing a lot of worry to peopl ...

The High Court has concluded in the case of AAA and others v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2022] EWHC 3230 (Admin) that the UK government’s Rwanda plan is lawful. The individual decisions in the case were inadequate and will need t ...

Rishi Sunak announced yesterday a number of measures to address the government’s self-made asylum backlog. The tone of Sunak’s statement was more measured than the sometimes rather unhinged rhetoric to which we have become accustomed, alth ...

Further submissions or a ‘fresh claim’ is a process for submitting an asylum (or human rights) application where there has been a previous failed claim and all appeal rights have been exhausted. It can be an effective tool for rectifying years of ...

Across Europe, asylum seekers and displaced people are facing growing hostility as they look to start new lives escaping war and persecution. In Greece, there is continually mounting evidence of “pushbacks” to which Frontex, the European Border an ...

The idea of a ‘white list’ of countries which are presumed to be safe and whose nationals will be swiftly returned is not a new one. In fact, it has been a feature of British law since section 2 of the Asylum and Immigration Act 1996 came ...

Yesterday the Home Secretary faced questions in front of the Home Affairs Select Committee. Today the quarterly statistics on immigration were released by the Office for National Statistics. What do the two say about the state of the asylum process, b ...

Back in the heady days of 2019, journalist Jon Stone started what turned out to be a very long thread on Twitter. Over and over and over again, he wrote “Abolish the Home Office”. Every tweet linked to example after example after example o ...

It is often not possible to mitigate additional distress when working with children given the nature of the asylum regime and the need to explore the hardest moments in your client’s life. This post gives some ideas on how to mitigate this distress ...