Local authorities have recently made headlines for failing to regularise the immigration status of children in their care. As the case of Darrell and Darren Roberts sadly exemplifies, not taking care of the immigration or citizenship status of children in care can have devastating consequences, including making them liable to...
With one year left before the close of the EU Settlement Scheme, the headline numbers look positive for the Home Office. By the end of May 2020 more than 3.6 million applications had been made, although some people have applied more than once. This headline number may be masking a...
No recourse to public funds (‘NRPF’) is a condition imposed on the majority of UK visa holders preventing them from claiming benefits. In R (W, A Child By His Litigation Friend J) v Secretary of State for the Home Department & Anor [2020] EWHC 1299, the High Court found the Home...
The Court of Appeal has returned to the legal issues arising from the closure of the Calais refugee camp in September 2016 and section 67 of the Immigration Act 2016, which forced the Home Office to develop a process for admitting unaccompanied children from the camp into the United Kingdom....
The vexed issue of reasonableness, removals and children is back in the judicial spotlight once more in a new Court of Appeal ruling, Runa v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2020] EWCA Civ 514. The case involved an appeal against a refusal to grant Ms Runa, an overstayer,...
The High Court has granted a Female Genital Mutilation Protection Order in the case of a 10-year-old girl who the Home Office is trying to remove to Bahrain. The case is A (A child) (Female Genital Mutilation Protection Order Application) [2020] EWHC 323 (Fam). A has lived in the UK...
The case of SD (British citizen children – entry clearance) Sri Lanka [2020] UKUT 43 (IAC) shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone following developments around Appendix FM and the rules relating to the rights of family members of British citizens to move to the UK. That does not, though,...
The High Court has ruled that charging a citizenship fee of over £1,000 to children is unlawful. The decision will be widely welcomed by campaigners who have long argued that the fee charged to register a child as British, which is set far above the administrative cost of processing applications,...
In July 2018, a Ghanaian lady named Florence* received a call to say that her 12-year-old son was about to be left on the streets of Accra unless she came to take him. The boy had been in the care of Florence’s sister, who had recently died. Florence dropped everything...
A law preventing men from passing on British citizenship to their biological offspring where the child’s mother is married to someone else may now be reconsidered in light of a government decision to drop its appeal against a landmark ruling made last summer. The original case of K [2018] EWHC...
The Upper Tribunal judgment in MS (British citizenship; EEA appeals) Belgium [2019] UKUT 356 (IAC) confirms that certain EU citizen children in the UK can be considered lawfully resident for the purposes of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, even if they (or their EU citizen parents...
The recent – and by now infamous – case of Re Nasrullah Mursalin [2019] EWCA Civ 1559, in which a paralegal was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment for disclosing papers from family proceedings to an immigration tribunal judge, has generated much concern amongst immigration practitioners about when it is permissible...
Earlier this week, the Guardian published the story of Amber Murrey, a US academic who got a job at Oxford as an associate geography professor, but whose two daughters, aged 4 and 9, were refused visas to join her in the UK. The story explains that Ms Murrey’s husband lives...
The President of the Family Division has decided that the family courts have no jurisdiction to interfere with immigration control, even if they think it is necessary to protect a girl from female genital mutilation (FGM). The most they can do is to ask the Home Office to refrain from...
A small amendment to UK law could soon make a big difference to European families resident here who are struggling to bring home children adopted in Muslim countries abroad. A change to the legal definition of who counts as an EEA citizen’s “family member” should end the uncertainty over the...
Unaccompanied asylum-seeking children often get short term leave to remain in the UK for only 30 months or until they turn 17-and-a-half, whichever is the shorter period of time. While they may get extensions at the end of such periods often they simply get removed from the country. Thus, age...
States have domestic and international legal obligations to provide suitable housing for unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. But a vulnerable young client at the Refugee Legal Support (RLS) clinic in Athens was last month kicked out of his accommodation for breaking the shelter’s rules. Jay*, a 17-year-old boy from Afghanistan, was condemned...
The Law Commission has proposed a new surrogacy pathway, replacing the “outdated” existing laws about having a child on behalf of somebody else. The key provisions of the current legislation have remained relatively constant for almost thirty years, despite considerable change in the use of surrogacy arrangements over that period...
The immigration tribunal has, once again, grappled with the public interest considerations which must be taken into account in all private and family life appeals against a migrant’s removal from the UK. It is now clear that, even where a child’s departure from the UK is unlikely to take place,...
Assiduous Free Movement readers and European law aficionados may remember the case of SM (Algeria) v Entry Clearance Officer [2018] UKSC 9, covered in this previous post. The case has now gone from the Supreme Court to the Court of Justice of the European Union, which has held that although a...
It is a decade since the UK agreed to lift its immigration reservation to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, recognising that “migrant” children are, well, children too. Section 55 of the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009 was enacted to this end, creating a duty for...
The High Court has allowed a Home Office appeal arguing that it is not necessarily unlawful to put British citizens in immigration detention. The judgment in Home Office v TR & Anor [2019] EWHC 49 (QB) concerned an eight-month-old baby detained with his mother for almost a fortnight despite lawyers for the...
Regular readers of this blog will, by now, be well aware of the Supreme Court’s decision in KO (Nigeria) which determined the correct approach in immigration cases involving children who are either British or who have lived in the UK for seven years. However many, particularly those outside Scotland, may...
Claiming asylum can be a traumatic experience. Having to relive the worst events in your life while you undergo a series of interviews and hearings is bad enough. It is even worse when Home Office officials are highly sceptical about a young person’s account, based on a selective or mistaken...
The Supreme Court has today handed down judgment in four linked cases all concerning the best interests of children who themselves face removal from the UK or whose parent faces removal from the UK. The case is likely to be referred to as KO (Nigeria) and Others v Secretary of...
Immigration and nationality law as it relates to international adoption is undoubtedly complex and a topic with which only a few practitioners are familiar. There are numerically very few international adoption cases, after all. The inevitable cross over with family law does not make it any easier. This blog post...
In SR (subsisting parental relationship – s117B(6)) Pakistan 2018 UKUT 3345 (IAC), the Upper Tribunal examines the various pieces of law relevant to deciding whether someone who has a child in the UK should be allowed to stay here. The case is helpful for two reasons: The Home Office’s approach...
This is the second of two Court of Appeal cases this year about whether the Home Office behaved unlawfully towards vulnerable child asylum seekers during and after the demolition of the Calais refugee camp in 2016. The first appeal, R (Citizens UK) v SSHD [2018] EWCA Civ 1812, concerned children...
In this post we are going to look at the requirements for children to obtain permission to enter and stay in the UK under Appendix FM. As we have seen in recent posts on the subject, Appendix FM (for “family members”) sets out the rules for non-EU citizens who want to...
The Independent and the Telegraph are reporting on the upsetting case of a little boy, born in Leeds, who is being denied re-entry to the UK because the Home Office has revoked his British passport. Mohamed Bangoura, aged six, was staying with relatives in Belgium over the summer and “marched away from...
The British Nationality Act 1981, which took effect on 1 January 1983, introduced British citizenship into UK nationality law. In doing so, it removed the principle of jus soli – the principle by which citizenship is acquired by being born on the territory – from the operation of that nationality...
Home Office profit on the fees charged to children exercising their right to British citizenship comes to nearly £100 million over the past five years, Free Movement analysis has shown. The controversially high fee for the citizenship process known as registration — set this year at £1,012 — is far...
The case of TY (Overseas Adoptions – Certificates of Eligibility) Jamaica [2018] UKUT 197 (IAC) involves the complex interplay between the Immigration Rules and international adoption law. It is a must-read for anyone involved in applications or appeals in this area. The case is also authority for the proposition that...
The Immigration Rules permit parents living overseas, who have British or settled children living in the UK, to apply for a visa to come to live with them. In this post we will consider the requirements that a parent applying for a visa in this category must meet in order...
There are a considerable number of asylum claims in the UK by young Afghan boys and men. The number should not be overstated, though. The latest immigration statistics show that Afghans are still outside the top five nationalities claiming asylum in the UK (excluding dependents). They also record that of...
In R (TDT, by his litigation friend Tara Topteagarden) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWCA Civ 1395 the Court of Appeal considered the threshold at which the duty to protect trafficked persons under article 4 of the European Convention on Human Rights comes into play and...
On Friday 15 June, a new statement of changes was laid. Rather atypically, many of the changes are welcome news! All changes will come into force on 6 July 2018, although some only apply to applications made after that date. As always, practitioners are encouraged to read the new rules...
Most unaccompanied child asylum seekers and refugees will be “children in need” for the purposes of the Children Act 1989. So the issue of whether or not local authorities have properly exercised their duties to provide accommodation and care frequently arises for this vulnerable group. In R (KI) v London...
