All Articles: Immigration news

There has been a fascinating little story unfolding around a case called SD (expert evidence) Lebanon [2008] UKAIT 00078. The Guardian picked up the story and ran an article on it on Monday. Dr Alan George is a respected academic and a specialist in ...

The Country of Origin Information Service (COIS) at the Home Office is the successor to the generally derided Country Information and Policy Unit (CIPU). CIPU reports were poorly researched and outright biased against asylum seekers, although many i ...

UPDATE: It would seem that Mark Ockelton has been sitting in the Administrative Court as a deputy high court judge and has not been promoted to the High Court bench. — A while ago I posted some gossip I had heard at the end of the summer: that M ...

In the selfless pursuit of immigration-related gossip and news, last Friday I went along to a gathering at a wine bar that was formerly the office of the Refugee Legal Centre. The surroundings have been somewhat improved since the RLC days, it turne ...

So, Phil “Muslims are Inbred” Woolas (left) is the new immigration minister, and Liam “Dessicated Calculated Machine” Byrne is out (and up). Woolas didn’t waste time before playing the populist, and immediately announced ...

The government is currently consulting on yet another fundamental overhaul of the immigration appeal system. This has become a bothersomely regular occurance, taking place in 1993, 1996, 1999, 2002 and 2004, with some further tweaks in 2006 and 2007 & ...

The BBC is reporting that the government will announce we are finally going to sign up properly next week to the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. At the moment the UK has a controversial opt-out of one of the key parts of the Convention, ...

I have come across four secret Home Office policies since I returned at the start of September. Normally the Home Office has been quite good at disclosing the policies that officials apply to cases. There is a large section on the BIA website devoted ...

UPDATE: THIS RUMOUR DOES NOT APPEAR TO BE TRUE There is a reasonably credible rumour doing the rounds amongst lawyers as well as Zimbabweans themselves that Zimbabwean asylum seekers can apply for permission to work – presumably with a reasonabl ...

I took no risks as I walked through immigration control. No point in aggravating them with a ‘nice uniform’ remark or other such wise cracks. They mainly bother poor and black people, although as I passed through ‘nothing to declare& ...

Normal service will resume in September – sorry folks! ...

I just came across a surprising Home Office press release. Usually, Home Office immigration press releases are recycled and re-used dribble. The ‘new’ ‘points’ based ‘system’ (I’d question the accuracy of all ...

Following on from the parliamentary debate last week, the Entry Clearance Guidance (ECG, until recently rather quaintly called the Diplomatic Service Instructions – I always thought the idea visa officers were diplomatic was rather optimistic) ...

There was more evidence at the weekend that a shortage of Polish plumbers will soon hit these shores. The Observer published an interesting, thoughtful article on the return of many Eastern European migrants from Ireland to their home countries or el ...

Bastards. ...

The letter setting out the settlement reached between the Law Society and the Legal Services Commision and Ministry of Justice has leaked out… and is here for anyone interested. No big bangs. A small increase to the fixed fees and some empty pr ...

There have been two important developments on returns to Iraq in the last week. The first is that an unknown number of Iraqis appear to have been removed on a specially chartered flight on 27 March. According to the International Federation of Iraqi R ...

In response to a comment left on my last post, I should make it clear that the concession as it stands in Hansard only applies to people currently in the UK who leave before 1 October 2008.  This really does not make sense as it penalises those who h ...

Immigration lawyers have been shocked by Government proposals to introduce from 1 April 2008 a re-entry ban on immigrants who have previously breached UK immigration laws. The ban was debated in the House of Lords last night. This is very rare for cha ...

A fascinating article has appeared in The Irish Times. Several tribunal chairmen — the Irish have wisely not glorified their tribunal staff with the misplaced title of ‘judges’ and I will call them adjudicators here — have resi ...

I’m back, after a prolonged absence and thoughts of ending it all etc etc. The blog, not me. I’m fine, thank you. The news is that of the 6000 or so (roughly 6,800, apparently) families who were the first to receive Legacy questionnaires, ...

A very well sourced rumour has it that 95% of the outstanding 450,000 asylum ‘legacy’ cases so far resolved have resulted in grants of status. However, I hear that the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal have been told to prepare for extra appeals. Wh ...

There was a great article in The Guardian yesterday (yes, of course I read The Guardian) about a possible upcoming shortage of Polish plumbers. It has been predicted that British householders will soon be moaning about having to use underskilled, over ...

I’ve been spurred back into blogging by a report I just saw from The Independent. It’s about what the Home Office and lawyers call ‘re-documentation’. Where an asylum claim fails, the Home Office are quick to start preparing a ...

Further to previous posts on this subject, there have been suggestions that the legacy ‘case resolution exercise’ is producing some surprisingly humane outcomes. An organisation previously unknown to me called Positive Action In Housing ...

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 ...

An entertaining couple of articles appeared in The Mail on Sunday over the weekend. I’m not exactly a regular reader of that publication, but was tipped off about it. Immigration Judge “J” of Brazilian cleaner infamy gives an intervi ...

There’s no amnesty. That’s all. I wish it wasn’t necessary to repeat this, but good immigration lawyers and good community groups are reporting increasing numbers of walk-in clients who have been charged large sums to make an applica ...

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 Tr ...

Exactly one year ago, on 25 July 2006, then Home Secretary John Reid announced that his officials had found around 400,000 to 450,000 unclosed asylum files found down the back of the sofas at Lunar House, home of the then Immigration and Nationality ...

There have been a few emails flying around amongst refugee lawyers recently about a court-ordered suspension on removals to the Democratic Republic of Congo. NCADC have posted up some information about the situation. In summary, a high court judge rec ...

I’ve just seen press reports that the Home Office is suggesting that immigration enforcement officers are issued with nice pastel-coloured uniforms (‘standard-issued clothing’) when doing dawn raids on families to remove them from ...

I’ve updated the Borders Bill page here with a little more up to date information. This follows a Home Office press release on 25 June 2007 announcing that protection for children subject to immigration control will be enhanced. I’ve taken ...

A few weeks ago, Channel 4 showed a documentary as part of the Unreported World series. The title was Mugabe’s Reign of Terror. The production company, Quicksilver Media, have taken the view that the programme is in the public domain and have m ...

The framework for immigration control is mainly contained in the Immigration Act 1971. This has been amended by major pieces of primary legislation in 1988, 1993, 1996, 1999, 2000, 2002, 2004, 2006 and probably also in 2007 by the UK Borders Bill curr ...

It is a question faced by all immigrants. To be uprooted from your own country, culture and kinship network leads to enormous dislocation and can be deeply traumatic. Living in exile is difficult, whether it is the result of forced movement or is ...

Co-incidentally, after my last post on Unaccompanied Asylum Seeker Children (UASCs) an excellent but depressing article appeared in The Guardian on the same topic. It describes the circumstances in which many refugee children live and was prompted by ...

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 w ...

Yesterday the Foreign and Commonwealth Office launched a new forced marriage survivor’s handbook. A specific team, the Forced Marriage Unit, was set up two years ago to deal with this issue and is reported to be dealing with 250 cases a year. Obvio ...

Until 2002 or thereabouts, the minimum age for the fiance in the UK who was to marry the person from abroad was 16 but the minimum age for the person from abroad was 18. These ages were then equalised at 18. It would appear that the age for both is so ...