The Ministry of Defence and Home Office have jointly announced that the government will be waiving settlement fees for foreign citizens who have served in
There is a lot going on in immigration law at the moment and we are looking to recruit more specialist contributors to Free Movement. If you can
The immigration inspector has welcomed an increase in free appointments at visa centres in the UK following a report showing that they have been consistently
Soul-searching in a large bureaucracy often manifests in well-meaning paperwork. So it is that the Home Office has published an ethical decision-making model. The document
This is where we keep tabs on changes to UK immigration laws, rules and procedures brought on by the coronavirus pandemic. We’ve been trying to
The Nationality and Borders Bill 2021 has lain dormant over the summer but will be taken up again once Parliament returns on 6 September. Down
Anna Delvey (née Sorokin) is perhaps the most (in)famous con artist in the world. After bluffing her way into New York high society, she was
One of the recommendations to the Home Office in a recent report by the immigration inspector was to “professionalise” Presenting Officers. Among the suggestions was
The government has committed to scrapping Cart judicial review and is consulting on other changes to JR as part of its response to the report
With travel bans from so-called “red list” countries, the suspension of travel corridors and today’s long-awaited introduction of compulsory hotel quarantine, those already holding or
The Home Office should do more to “professionalise” the officials it sends to argue immigration cases in court, the immigration inspector has found. A report
Lawyers interested in deportation will be aware of the decision in AM (Zimbabwe) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2020] UKSC 17, handed
For many campaigners there is a lot of uncertainty about how to get traction for their cause as Brexit and Covid continue to dominate the
I follow immigration law and policy pretty closely but, I must confess, I simply do not know what UK government immigration policy is right now.
The vice-president of the Upper Tribunal has laid into a more junior immigration judge for a judgment so bad it amounted to a “failure of
The long-awaited statement of changes giving us more details on the famous “new Points-Based Immigration System” has now been published. It is over 500 pages
Home Office Presenting Officers are civil servants who represent the government in immigration appeals. Last month we ran an article by an anonymous HOPO describing
For many of the Windrush generation it was the hostile environment which signalled the start of their wrongful exclusion from society and, in some cases,
Hugo Storey had his last day as a judge on 30 September, having reached the statutory retirement age of 75. The established place the Upper
We Presenting Officers can usually be put into two categories. The first group is unable to see anything wrong with any decision and will defend
The government is to abandon a highly controversial change to legal aid for online immigration appeals after accepting that it was pushed through unlawfully. The
On 4 August 2020, the Home Office issued new guidance to its civil servants on how to respond to immigration appeals that the department has
Earlier this year JCWI, with the help of Foxglove, launched a legal challenge against the Home Office over its use of an algorithmic “streaming tool”
Home Secretary Priti Patel has proposed nothing less than a revolution within the Home Office in response to the Windrush Lessons Learned Review by Wendy
Home Office targets for handling complaints within 20 working days are “routinely missed”, according to a report published today by the immigration inspector, David Bolt.
A solicitor who failed to make immigration applications on behalf of 17 clients and faked an entire judicial review to cover his tracks has been
Like many other jurisdictions, the First-tier Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) has been forced to change how it works as a result of the COVID-19
A recent report on the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) people in Wales has urged the Welsh government to lobby
A solicitor whose well-respected immigration firm collapsed in 2018 has been fined £15,000 after admitting to breaches of accounting rules. Lawrence Lupin accepted responsibility for
If you’ve been struggling to keep up with the avalanche of immigration news and Home Office U-turns since lockdown began, you’re not alone. I’ve thrown
The sheer surrealism of an immigration lawyer’s job can perhaps only truly be understood by MC Escher’s architect or Salvador Dali’s landscape designer: you do your
Reports by the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration, David Bolt, now follow a familiar pattern. Mr Bolt and his team carry out an
On 13 October 1997, the new Labour government published a document on family visas. It was called the Concession Outside the Immigration Rules for unmarried
By Alex Piletska and John Vassiliou Welcome to your first day as an Administrative Officer, the most junior civil service grade. We’re sure you will
Sometimes a migrant here in the UK unlawfully will want to apply for immigration status. Lawyers and the Home Office often call this “regularising” their
More on the mysterious legal power that the Home Secretary claims to have to grant automatic visa extensions to foreign NHS workers. Asked about the
I have read a lot of pre-action letters in my time. And I have responded to a fair few too. For a couple of years
The government continues to keep us immigration lawyers on our toes, and everyone else completely flummoxed, with yet another statement of changes to the Immigration
Yesterday’s government announcement on The Future Relationship with the EU made it clear that the United Kingdom would not seek to participate in the European
The Home Office should release more details about a “cryptic” computer programme that scores visa applicants as high, medium and low risk, the immigration inspector
The Ministry of Defence and Home Office have jointly announced that the government will be waiving settlement fees for foreign citizens who have served in the UK armed forces for at least six years or been discharged due to an illness or injury attributable to their service. The change will...
There is a lot going on in immigration law at the moment and we are looking to recruit more specialist contributors to Free Movement. If you can write fluently, you are interested in being read by a wide audience and you are fascinated by immigration law and practice then have...
The immigration inspector has welcomed an increase in free appointments at visa centres in the UK following a report showing that they have been consistently unavailable. David Neal found that Home Office attempts to keep appointments free despite outsourcing them had “not yet been achieved”. The result has been an...
Soul-searching in a large bureaucracy often manifests in well-meaning paperwork. So it is that the Home Office has published an ethical decision-making model. The document is intended to help staff grappling with difficult moral choices in the course of their work. This was one of the recommendations of the Wendy...
This is where we keep tabs on changes to UK immigration laws, rules and procedures brought on by the coronavirus pandemic. We’ve been trying to keep this post continually up to date rather than covering new coronavirus developments as separate blog posts that may become rapidly out of date. Material...
The Nationality and Borders Bill 2021 has lain dormant over the summer but will be taken up again once Parliament returns on 6 September. Down in the miscellaneous provisions is a requirement for people entering the UK without a visa or British/Irish passport to register in advance. Known as electronic...
Anna Delvey (née Sorokin) is perhaps the most (in)famous con artist in the world. After bluffing her way into New York high society, she was eventually caught out, convicted of various offences including grand larceny, and received a sentence of 4–12 years in New York state prison (as well as...
One of the recommendations to the Home Office in a recent report by the immigration inspector was to “professionalise” Presenting Officers. Among the suggestions was that a code of conduct was necessary for Presenting Officers to establish a consistent standard of behaviour. This recommendation was acted upon relatively quickly, by...
The government has committed to scrapping Cart judicial review and is consulting on other changes to JR as part of its response to the report of the Independent Review of Administrative Law, both of which were published today. The abolition of the Cart procedure, which effectively gives people a second...
With travel bans from so-called “red list” countries, the suspension of travel corridors and today’s long-awaited introduction of compulsory hotel quarantine, those already holding or who have applied for UK visas will be concerned about how these measures may affect their visas and ability to travel to the UK. There...
The Home Office should do more to “professionalise” the officials it sends to argue immigration cases in court, the immigration inspector has found. A report by the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration, published today, says that Home Office Presenting Officers (HOPOs) need better training and more rigorous professional...
Lawyers interested in deportation will be aware of the decision in AM (Zimbabwe) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2020] UKSC 17, handed down in April 2020. In that case, the Supreme Court set out the correct test that should be applied to cases where the courts are...
For many campaigners there is a lot of uncertainty about how to get traction for their cause as Brexit and Covid continue to dominate the policy space. Migration advocates have a different challenge: the government has been clear that it wants to create an immigration system which is “firm but...
I follow immigration law and policy pretty closely but, I must confess, I simply do not know what UK government immigration policy is right now. We are told there is a new points based immigration system but that tells us nothing about what outcomes the government wants from the new...
The vice-president of the Upper Tribunal has laid into a more junior immigration judge for a judgment so bad it amounted to a “failure of the judicial process”. Vice-president Ockelton said that the judgment in question, which was littered with errors and irrelevant material apparently copy and pasted from previous...
The long-awaited statement of changes giving us more details on the famous “new Points-Based Immigration System” has now been published. It is over 500 pages long and even the explanatory memorandum, which is usually just a few pages long, weighs in at 50 pages. This article is a summary of...
Home Office Presenting Officers are civil servants who represent the government in immigration appeals. Last month we ran an article by an anonymous HOPO describing how the immigration system looks from that side of the fence and inviting questions by readers. Here are the answers. Thanks to everyone who sent...
For many of the Windrush generation it was the hostile environment which signalled the start of their wrongful exclusion from society and, in some cases, the UK itself. For others, the injustice started much earlier. Between 1973 and 1988, many Commonwealth citizens with indefinite leave to remain in the UK...
Hugo Storey had his last day as a judge on 30 September, having reached the statutory retirement age of 75. The established place the Upper Tribunal now has in the UK judicial system and its high reputation abroad owes much to Hugo’s pioneering role. Lawyer and lecturer Prior to becoming...
We Presenting Officers can usually be put into two categories. The first group is unable to see anything wrong with any decision and will defend it at all costs. Although hopefully they’re few and far between, anyone with a bit of experience before the tribunal has probably come across them....
The government is to abandon a highly controversial change to legal aid for online immigration appeals after accepting that it was pushed through unlawfully. The Civil Legal Aid (Remuneration) (Amendment) (Coronavirus) Regulations 2020 will now be scrapped and legal aid paid at hourly rates pending a full consultation. In a...
On 4 August 2020, the Home Office issued new guidance to its civil servants on how to respond to immigration appeals that the department has lost. The 18-page document can be found here (pdf download). For the most part, the guidance is welcome. Anyone who has ever won an appeal...
Earlier this year JCWI, with the help of Foxglove, launched a legal challenge against the Home Office over its use of an algorithmic “streaming tool” that assigned risk categories to visa applications. The tool, previously covered on Free Movement, scored visa applicants for risk based in part on their nationality....
Home Secretary Priti Patel has proposed nothing less than a revolution within the Home Office in response to the Windrush Lessons Learned Review by Wendy Williams. In a statement to the House of Commons yesterday, which should be read in full, Patel outlined a five-pronged approach which, if actually implemented,...
Home Office targets for handling complaints within 20 working days are “routinely missed”, according to a report published today by the immigration inspector, David Bolt. Mr Bolt also says that the department has failed to keep up improvements in this area made between 2015 and 2017 and needs to go...
A solicitor who failed to make immigration applications on behalf of 17 clients and faked an entire judicial review to cover his tracks has been struck off. The Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal found that Christopher Ka Ki Cheng had “failed to make or progress” immigration applications on behalf of 17 clients...
Like many other jurisdictions, the First-tier Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) has been forced to change how it works as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. First, HM Courts and Tribunals Service made expanded use of an online procedure which it was already piloting as part of ongoing digital reforms....
A recent report on the disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) people in Wales has urged the Welsh government to lobby the UK government to reduce visa costs, especially for those whose income is too low to sponsor their spouses or children. What is the...
A solicitor whose well-respected immigration firm collapsed in 2018 has been fined £15,000 after admitting to breaches of accounting rules. Lawrence Lupin accepted responsibility for six breaches of the rules on financial and practice management, including unpaid interpreter invoices and having a shortfall on the client account. The Solicitors Regulation...
If you’ve been struggling to keep up with the avalanche of immigration news and Home Office U-turns since lockdown began, you’re not alone. I’ve thrown together this immigration track and trace post to catalogue the major immigration law events of the pandemic so far, which includes some concessions that were...
The sheer surrealism of an immigration lawyer’s job can perhaps only truly be understood by MC Escher’s architect or Salvador Dali’s landscape designer: you do your best to navigate the impossible, but you can’t help being occasionally hit in the face by a massive melting clock. Here are ten of...
Reports by the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration, David Bolt, now follow a familiar pattern. Mr Bolt and his team carry out an inspection of a certain area of Home Office activity. A report on possible areas of improvement is drawn up and sent to the department for...
On 13 October 1997, the new Labour government published a document on family visas. It was called the Concession Outside the Immigration Rules for unmarried partners and it was a legal landmark. The concession allowed certain foreigners in the UK to apply for leave to remain on the basis of...
By Alex Piletska and John Vassiliou Welcome to your first day as an Administrative Officer, the most junior civil service grade. We’re sure you will fit right in. To help you get to grips with all the technical mumbo-jumbo that can get in the way of reducing net migration, we’ve...
Sometimes a migrant here in the UK unlawfully will want to apply for immigration status. Lawyers and the Home Office often call this “regularising” their status, because the person becomes a “regular” migrant within the rules rather than an “irregular” one outside the rules. One of the ways to do...
More on the mysterious legal power that the Home Secretary claims to have to grant automatic visa extensions to foreign NHS workers. Asked about the legal basis for automatic extensions by MPs on the Home Affairs Committee this morning, Priti Patel said: Of course, as Home Secretary, I’m able to...
The government continues to keep us immigration lawyers on our toes, and everyone else completely flummoxed, with yet another statement of changes to the Immigration Rules. Thankfully, many of these changes are welcome as they plug gaps in the EU Settlement Scheme. But it is difficult to keep up with...
Yesterday’s government announcement on The Future Relationship with the EU made it clear that the United Kingdom would not seek to participate in the European Arrest Warrant (EAW) scheme. This will not come as a surprise to those who have been watching this issue since the referendum: the prospects of...
The Home Office should release more details about a “cryptic” computer programme that scores visa applicants as high, medium and low risk, the immigration inspector has recommended. David Bolt says that while applicants labelled high risk are not being automatically refused visas, officials should “demystify” the tool to allay concerns...
