The legal action initiated by David Miranda through UK solicitors Bindmans brings into sharp focus an issue that has been troubling me since the Snowden revelations began: how can a lawyer acting against government be sure that privileged communications with his or her client are not being read by that...
Kent Martin is a regular and long time Free Movement reader and sent this in for the blog. I thought it made an interesting contrast to the absence of positive media coverage in this country. I’m an Australian/Brit who has spent over a decade in both countries and have been...
After my impromptu Snowden mini series a couple of weeks ago, ECRE got in touch to ask for a “didactic commentary regarding general asylum procedures in the context of Snowden’s situation”. With permission, here is the article below, reproduced from the ECRE Weekly Briefing for 12 July 2013:
...Mr Justice Bernard McCloskey has been appointed the new President of the Upper Tribunal’s Immigration and Asylum Chamber. His term begins on 1 October 2013 at the conclusion of Mr Justice Nicholas Blake’s three year term of office. First of all, a few words on the term of Mr Justice...
Morning! Unusually, there were several interesting snippets on immigration over the weekend. Here’s a reasonably random small selection via Twitter for your Monday morning delectation: http://t.co/XqVXj3xFBx Prenga is back up… going to be listed for expeditious hearing. Will keep people posted. — Waleed Hassan (@whassanuk) July 12, 2013 Facebook campaigns...
Edward Snowden, the private contractor who exposed the industrial scale intelligence gathering methods of the United States’ National Security Agency and our own GCHQ, is seeking asylum in Russia and a host of other countries. He fears that his ‘freedom and safety’ are under threat. The US government asserts that...
Edward Snowden is coming across as pretty desperate and is reported to have made asylum applications to a host of different countries, all from his reported current location of Russia. The Guardian is keeping tabs on which countries have so far responded and what they have said. It is doubtful...
I can keep this fairly short: ‘no’. In his Wikileaks statement Edward Snowden says that the US government “has unilaterally revoked my passport, leaving me a stateless person” This is a common misconception. A passport is evidence of nationality, but it does not confer nationality. All states have laws that...
Today the closed material procedure for evidence in civil trials comes into effect. This excludes one of the parties from the proceedings, meaning that they do not get to see the evidence relied on by the other party. It violates one of the basic tenets of fair trial and it...
There are some detailed blog posts to come on some of the more important things that happened in the last fortnight, but for those who missed their beloved Free Movement updates here is a brief round up of developments I’ve spotted looking through my emails on my return from holiday....
Legal aid work has, paradoxically, always felt like both a duty and a privilege. A duty because the rates of pay are much lower than for private work and, arguably, even artificially depress private rates. The still recent across the board 10% cut in legal aid rates merely exacerbated that...
Theresa May this weekend launched a blistering and unprecedented attack on ‘a minority of judges’, accused them of ignoring the will of Parliament by refusing to deport foreign criminals. Remarkably, she said that: A minority think it is their role to determine whether or not foreigners who commit serious crimes...
It’s early in the week, but already we’ve been hit by two biggish pieces of mainstream immigration news, neither of which really address real concerns, and nor will they have much of an impact. There have been reports that the government are considering a number of different methods to put...
We at Renaissance Chambers wish to join the Bar Association of Sri Lanka, the International Commission of Jurists and the UK Bar Human Rights Committee amongst others and pay tribute to this brave woman who makes this statement though she fears for her life. Her dismissal signals to many the...
This is such a good explanation of the census data on the foreign-born component of the ‘usually resident’ population that I felt I had to share it. Really good work by the Office of National Statistics. It is a five minute look at the data with some very simple but...
Carrying on from FM’s open season article last week, it is clear that immigration lawyers are getting a hard time of it at the moment: first it was judge bashing and now the lawyers are in the firing line. The pernicious pastime of naming and shaming the legal profession needs...
Back to more serious blogging and the detention mini series ASAP, but I simply can’t resist a quick plug for Renaissance Chambers, the team behind this blog. On Thursday last week we were awarded the tasteful little logo to the right by Chambers and Partners, the well known guide to...
Imprisoned lawyer Nasrin Sotoudeh and banned film maker Jafar Panahi have been awarded the Sakharav Prize. The Sakharav Prize, named after the Soviet scientist and dissident, is an annual prize, awarded by the European Parliament to individuals or organisations fighting for human rights and fundamental freedoms. Nasrin Sotoudeh is currently...
The UK Border Agency has taken to using social media to proclaim its propaganda on the ongoing purge of illegal immigrants from the United Kingdom. Conventional press releases are no longer sufficient. Free Movement has already covered the use of YouTube (see latest bizarre video here). Now Twitter, Storify and Flickr...
The UK Border Agency just got permission to appeal from the First-tier Tribunal on these grounds, reproduced word for word in their entirety: The Judge of the First-tier Tribunal has made a material error of law in the determination in the following way. The judge has erred by failing to...
It will not have escaped the attention of immigration barristers in London that there are some very fresh faces in court acting for the Home Office. ‘Operation Present’ is back, sort of, with the Home Office having recruited a bunch of junior barristers to ensure no case goes uncovered. Free...
As we have previously argued on this blog here and here, attacks by newspapers on judges for following and applying the law are unwarranted and dangerous in a healthy democracy. In one recent such attack article, the Daily Mail named a particular immigration judge and published a paparazzi-style photograph of him...
The Sunday Telegraph yesterday published an article singling out three Senior Immigration Judges as being excessively lenient. I am going to more or less ignore the issue of the correctness or otherwise of the principle of singling out judges based on outcomes of their cases. It is a very difficult...
Fresh off the press is the Government’s Statement of Intent: Family Migration which proposes not just to change but to direct the way in which the UKBA and Courts decide Article 8 cases. FM has recently discussed whether it is legally permissible to do this but, for the time being...
Theresa May has announced that people considered by Bullingdon Club alumni David Cameron and George Osborne to be ‘poor’ will be prevented from marrying or living together in the same area. In order that individual assessments need not be made, a threshold of £18,600 is being set to define poverty....
Not very soft at all. Paragraph 364 of the Immigration Rules, which governs both the UK Border Agency and to a significant extent the immigration tribunal and courts, states that, subject to human rights law (an important proviso), there is a presumption in favour of deportation where the Home Office...
In an interview with The Telegraph this weekend Home Secretary Theresa May appeared, at least to those wearing magic-rabidly-Eurosceptic-wishful-thinking-specs, to suggest that the UK Government was contemplating suspending free movement rights for southern Europeans if the Euro collapses: And what if a eurozone collapse sent thousands of economic migrants heading north...
As has been widely reported in the mainstream media, the Government proposes to scrap family visitor appeal rights. Again. The change is intended to come into full effect in 2014 but as early as July 2012 the definition of ‘family’ will be narrowed to exclude cousins, uncles, aunts, nieces or nephews....
