All Articles: Cases

Fee cheque bounces

Since the introduction of fees for immigration applications in 2003, the Home Office has become fanatical about collection of these fees. If the fee isn’t

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Metock accepted by tribunal

It should not be a shock that the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal have in a case called HB (Algeria) just accepted the European Court of Justice

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Good news from on high

The House of Lords have just issued four judgments today, three of which are good news for immigrants. The first is Beoku-Betts. In a surprisingly

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Latest news on HS Zimbabwe

News just in from Mark Henderson, the barrister behind the Zimbabwe test case litigation, is that HS is appealing the negative decision of the tribunal in his

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More news on the re-entry ban

Liam Byrne, the Immigration Minister, has written to the Immigration Law Practitioners Association (ILPA) with some further clarification on the no return amendment to paragraph

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Sudanese test case

It has taken me a while to get around to posting on the House of Lords judgment in the Sudanese test case, SSHD v AH

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Latest ticking off

The Court of Appeal has given the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal another good ticking off. The case is AG (Eritrea) v SSHD and, frankly, is

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AA (Zimbabwe) test case

The test case of AA (Zimbabwe), mentioned in previous posts, is being dropped by the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal in favour of another case, called

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Sympathy for the AIT

I went for a drink last night with a couple of immigration lawyer friends and they had a lot less sympathy for the AIT than

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Further to my last post on this subject, it turns out that my surprise was entirely justified, as a different and more senior panel of the tribunal has decided, basically, that Metock changes nothing and it should be business as usual. The case is SM (Metock; extended family members) Sri...

12th October 2008
BY Free Movement

Since the introduction of fees for immigration applications in 2003, the Home Office has become fanatical about collection of these fees. If the fee isn’t included with the application, no application is considered to have been made, so your leave to remain might expire while you think the Home Office...

9th October 2008
BY Free Movement

I’ve just come across another good case from the Court of Appeal that came out over the summer while I was away: the fantastically named GOO and Others [2008] EWCA Civ 747. It is yet another example of a long and tarnished line of tribunal case law being overturned. I’ve...

29th September 2008
BY Free Movement

I tried, but I just couldn’t think of a good title for this post. This is a follow up to an earlier post about some secret Home Office policies, some of which have now been published. A week or so ago, the Home Office published one of these previously secret...

24th September 2008
BY Free Movement

It should not be a shock that the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal have in a case called HB (Algeria) just accepted the European Court of Justice decision in Metock. UK courts and tribunals are required to accept the ECJ’s judgments on the interpretation and meaning of European Community law, after...

23rd September 2008
BY Free Movement

Shocker: the Home Office appear to have accepted what the Lords say in Chikwamba (see previous posts on the House of Lords cases themselves and then on the secret policies if coming to this fresh). The policy just published and now to be applied in all relevant Article 8 cases...

18th September 2008
BY Free Movement

The House of Lords have just issued four judgments today, three of which are good news for immigrants. The first is Beoku-Betts. In a surprisingly short judgment the Lords tell the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal to stop messing around and get on with assessing the rights of all family members...

25th June 2008
BY Free Movement

News just in from Mark Henderson, the barrister behind the Zimbabwe test case litigation, is that HS is appealing the negative decision of the tribunal in his case, which was used as a test case for all Zimbabweans currently in the UK. Permission to appeal sounds like it was refused...

5th June 2008
BY Free Movement

I found it necessary to polish off a bottle of wine before writing this post (Charon QC would be proud, although Rioja it was not), for reasons I think are probably clear from reading it. It is not a pleasant subject. The European Court of Human Rights, often referred to...

27th May 2008
BY Free Movement

Liam Byrne, the Immigration Minister, has written to the Immigration Law Practitioners Association (ILPA) with some further clarification on the no return amendment to paragraph 320 of the immigration rules (see here, here and here for previous posts on this). There are no shocks, really, but he does rather usefully...

14th April 2008
BY Free Movement

It was with considerable pleasure that I read in the paper this morning that the HSMP Forum has won its challenge to the Home Office’s heavy-handed and inconsiderate change to the HSMP rules. I could use stronger language, but I’ll leave it to Mr Justice Bean, who decided the case:...

10th April 2008
BY Free Movement

JCWI have put out a press release stating that the Home Office has been granted permission to appeal to the House of Lords against the Court of Appeal judgment in Baiai. The press release does not appear on the JCWI website, however, so I’ve copied it in below. The news...

6th December 2007
BY Free Movement

The official version of the determination, with explanatory headnote, has now been made available. Click here for link to the BAILII version. There will almost certainly be an application for permission to appeal. Whether that will be granted is far less certain.

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30th November 2007
BY Free Movement

Permission was granted today by Mr Justice Sullivan in a judicial review of the decision to retrospectively change the immigration rules on the qualifying criteria for settlement under the Highly Skilled Migrant Programme. The case will now proceed to a full hearing. The background is that since 2002 the government...

30th November 2007
BY Free Movement

It has taken me a while to get around to posting on the House of Lords judgment in the Sudanese test case, SSHD v AH (Sudan) [2007] UKHL 49. This might be at least partly explained by my not wanting to have to post on it, as if this act...

29th November 2007
BY Free Movement

Since I posted last night about the outcome of the HS (Zimbabwe) test case (we lost) the AIT seems to have removed the determination from its website. However, by clicking here you can get hold of a copy I downloaded earlier, in the finest Blue Peter fashion. I suspect that...

26th November 2007
BY Free Movement

Many thanks to the leaver of a comment left on an earlier post on HS (Zimbabwe) for this. The result of this important test case seems to have appeared with no fanfare on the AIT website, in the unreported determinations section. It isn’t yet listed as a Country Guideline case...

25th November 2007
BY Free Movement

I heard a great story the other day about the country guideline case that had been listed to deal with the situation in Iraq and the new ‘serious harm’ definition in the EC Qualification Directive. I had wondered what had happened to this, but what with the delay with coming...

24th November 2007
BY Free Movement

There have been some excellent and well-informed posts about this case already in the legal blogging world, notably at Nearly Legal, Head of Legal and the prolific Jailhouse Lawyer. No-one has explained the rationale for why the relevant EC Directive — full title Directive 2004/38/EC on the right of citizens...

7th September 2007
BY Free Movement

The Court of Appeal has given the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal another good ticking off. The case is AG (Eritrea) v SSHD and, frankly, is probably of no interest whatsoever to anyone except geeky immigration lawyers such as myself. However, it’s another piece of objective proof that the current AIT...

10th August 2007
BY Free Movement

There have been a lot of hits on this site from people looking for news about the Zimbabwe test cases. The latest news is that last week’s hearing is now over. The panel consisted of Mr Ockelton (Deputy President of the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal), Dr Storey (in charge of...

30th July 2007
BY Free Movement

UPDATE 19/4/09: The Home Office has stopped charging for Certificates of Approval. They say their policy is under review and they say they are “carefully considering the implications for those who have already paid a fee and will shortly announce its policy in this respect”. More to follow when anything...

7th July 2007
BY Free Movement

The test case of AA (Zimbabwe), mentioned in previous posts, is being dropped by the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal in favour of another case, called HS (Zimbabwe). This is apparently because the AIT did not want to have to deal with argument about what issues the Court of Appeal ordered...

15th May 2007
BY Free Movement

I’m still catching up on a few developments while I was away over Easter, and have just read the Court of Appeal case of AH (Sudan) and Others v SSHD [2007] EWCA Civ 297, which came out on 4 April 2007. This is yet another Country Guideline case which has...

12th April 2007
BY Free Movement

I went for a drink last night with a couple of immigration lawyer friends and they had a lot less sympathy for the AIT than myself. Their line was that the AIT should stop making such politically inspired and illiberal decisions, and that the latest incarnation of AA (Zimbabwe) is...

9th March 2007
BY Free Movement

The Court of Appeal has yet again overturned the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal’s attempt definitively to establish whether a failed asylum seeker is at risk of ill-treatment by the Zimbabwe secret service at Harare airport following a forced removal there. That’s a sentence and a half. But it’s a case...

8th March 2007
BY Free Movement
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