All Articles: Points Based System

In many cases, employers who wish to hire Tier 2 skilled workers must pass the Resident Labour Market Test. This means that Tier 2 sponsors must offer a position to a settled worker ahead of a migrant where both candidates have the necessary skills and experience. Discrimination, but the acceptable...

2nd February 2018
BY Nick Nason

The web of Rules and Guidance has become so tangled that even the spider has difficulty controlling it. So says Lord Justice Underhill in Mudiyanselage v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWCA Civ 65, the latest decision in a long lineage examining the much maligned Points Based...

1st February 2018
BY Darren Stevenson

In the High Court last month, Mrs Justice Moulder found that the Home Office had gathered partly unreliable intelligence in the course of an investigation into a college, breaching its right to peaceful enjoyment of its Tier 4 sponsor licence under Article 1 Protocol 1 of the European Convention on...

31st January 2018
BY Pip Hague

In the midst of an “NHS crisis”, with two in three hospitals said to have a shortage of doctors, immigration laws appear to be making the situation worse. Last week iNews reported that dozens of medics with offers to work in the NHS had their visa applications refused. Even more strikingly, the...

24th January 2018
BY Nath Gbikpi

Hidden within December’s statement of changes (HC309) to the Immigration Rules are new provisions that will affect how the Home Office assesses continuous residence for indefinite leave to remain (ILR) applications. Certain visa categories require an applicant to show they have been “continually resident” in the UK over a five...

8th January 2018
BY Joanna Hunt

The Secretary of State’s decision to revoke an IT consultancy’s Tier 2 sponsor licence was upheld before Christmas in R (Sri Prathinik Consulting Limited) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2017] EWHC 3204 (Admin). A stream of case law was cited, most notably Lord Justice Tomlinson’s leading judgment...

3rd January 2018
BY Pip Hague

A Statement of Changes in Immigration Rules HC309 was laid yesterday, 7 December 2017. This note does not aim at detailing all the changes, instead just highlighting the most significant ones. Except where otherwise indicated, these changes will come into force on 11 January 2018, although applications made before 11...

8th December 2017
BY Nath Gbikpi

Like (I suspect) many other practitioners, I often find myself speaking to a client’s employer to explain to them why my client has the right to work. The most typical example is where a client has submitted an application by post before the expiry of their leave. The document showing...

4th December 2017
BY Nath Gbikpi

The Home Secretary recently announced that the number of people who can be accepted under the Tier 1 (Exceptional Talent) immigration route would double, from 1,000 to 2,000 each year. The exceptional talent visa regime does exactly what it says on the tin, providing a route for recognised or emerging leaders...

22nd November 2017
BY Nick Nason

According to UK immigration rules, if a chef works at a restaurant which provides a take-away service, he is less skilled than one who plies his trade at a restaurant that does not. As a result, restaurants which provide a take-away service cannot offer employment to chefs under the Tier...

21st November 2017
BY Nick Nason

Immigration policy is decided at a national level, meaning that the rules governing the entry of foreign nationals to the UK are almost entirely the same across the land. The requirements, for instance, to be met by nurses under Tier 2 of the Points Based System are the same in...

3rd November 2017
BY nicknason

Sivayogam is a religious charity, serving Hindu and Tamil communities in London. Finding priests in the UK and Europe had proven difficult so, in 2009, it applied for registration as a Tier 2 sponsor, allowing the organisation to bring in religious workers from abroad. Its experience in R (Sivayogam) v...

31st October 2017
BY nicknason

In 2011, Russell and Ellen Felber set up the award-winning Torridon Guest House in Inverness. It has hundreds of stellar reviews across TripAdvisor and similar sites. The New Yorkers made their home in the Highlands having fallen in love with the area during a holiday there, initially spending £300,000 to...

25th October 2017
BY nicknason

Nadeem Anjum applied for a Tier 1 (Entrepreneur) visa in early 2015. It was refused. The Entry Clearance Officer took the view, following an interview with Mr Anjum, that he was not a “genuine entrepreneur”. Since rights of appeal against Points Based System applications were removed, judicial consideration of the...

24th October 2017
BY nicknason

What are the immigration rules for footballers from outside the EU? And what rules will apply to footballer transfers from abroad after Brexit? Here we look at the immigration aspects of football transfers using the recent successful but fraught transfer of Serge Aurier from Paris Saint-Germain to Tottenham Hotspur. Aurier is...

7th September 2017
BY Paul Erdunast

Tier 2 is a fortress. Everything about the UK work permit system is designed to disincentivise employers importing migrant labour from outside of the EU. Like a teacher who has lost control of her class at school and exacts revenge on her own children at home, who are occasionally fed...

12th June 2017
BY nicknason

Businesses large and small are the backbone of our economies, and enterprise is the engine of our prosperity. That is why Britain is – and will always be – open for business: open to investment in our companies, infrastructure, universities and entrepreneurs. –  Theresa May, Davos, January 2017 Entrepreneurs are...

17th May 2017
BY Nick Nason

The President of the Immigration and Asylum Chamber of the Upper Tribunal has found that the Home Office abused its power in forcing a college to expel a student and deliberately depriving him of a statutory right of appeal. The case has now been reported as R (on the application of Mohibullah ) v Secretary of...

11th January 2017
BY Colin Yeo

The Points Based System is notoriously complex and indecipherable. Initially I believe this was simply incompetence on the part of Home Office officials unable to communicate in plain English and ill equipped to design to and then adapt to the constantly shifting requirements of Ministers. My view is that the...

8th December 2016
BY Colin Yeo

Statement of Changes to the Immigration Rules HC667 was laid yesterday, 3 November 2016. The document weighs in at 90 pages but many of the changes are to language rather than effect. The more significant changes are to Tier 2 skilled workers, for whom the minimum salary level is increased,...

4th November 2016
BY Colin Yeo

“Technical”, “deeply unattractive”, “disingenuous”, “singularly lacks merit”, “ridiculous”, “inappropriate”, “extraordinary”. All words used by Elias or Vos LLJ to describe the arguments advanced by the Home Office in the course of their judgments in the remarkable case of R (On the Application Of Ufot) v Secretary of State for the...

16th May 2016
BY Colin Yeo

President McCloskey has firmly rejected the Home Office case against students alleged to have fraudulently obtained English language test certificate from ETS (“Educational Testing Services Ltd”) in the case of SM and Ihsan Qadir v Secretary of State for the Home Department IA/31380/2014. The President finds that the Home Office evidence suffered from...

13th May 2016
BY Colin Yeo

In yet another case highlighting the absurdly hostile, bureaucratic and inflexible nature of the UK’s Points Based System the Court of Appeal has held that a Tier 1 Entrepreneur might benefit from a policy on evidential flexibility that was “much broader” than the rules themselves. The case is SH (Pakistan) v...

11th May 2016
BY Colin Yeo

A recent report by the Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration, David Bolt, revealed that the management of curtailment decisions in Tier 4 cases is inconsistent and the Home Office is unable to deal with the thousands of curtailment cases and Sponsors notifications it receives every month. You can see the...

29th March 2016
BY Caterina Franchi

A new set of Immigration Rules has been laid in Statement of Changes HC877. The changes take effect on 6 April 2016. You can access the explanatory notes or the full rules or both together. There are a LOT of changes. Stand out features include: Those with a “litigation debt” to...

11th March 2016
BY Colin Yeo

A few snippets from a recent debate in the House of Lords. An amendment to the current Immigration Bill currently wending its way through Parliament was tabled which would close the Tier 1 Investor route. This type of visa is obtained by making an investment of at least £2 million...

24th February 2016
BY Colin Yeo

Major changes to the Immigration Rules affecting refugees, Tiers 1, 2 and 5, EEA nationals sponsoring family members under the Immigration Rules, visitors, applications for Administrative Review and knowledge of language and life tests are being introduced with effect from tomorrow, 12 November 2015. The changes are wrought by Statement...

11th November 2015
BY Colin Yeo

A new report by Transparency International, Gold rush: Investment visas and corrupt capital flows into the UK, suggests that substantial amounts of corrupt wealth stolen from China and Russia are “highly likely” to have been laundered into the UK through the UK’s Tier 1 Investor “golden visa” programme. The report singles out...

22nd October 2015
BY Colin Yeo

The Supreme Court has given judgment in the case of Mandalia v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2015] UKSC 59 about the interpretation and application of the Home Office’s Points Based System evidential flexibility policy. Regular followers of the blog will be familiar with this policy, which was...

19th October 2015
BY Colin Yeo

Back in the day, One Direction enjoyed considerable success and dominated the reported charts. Without a picture in the attic, though, good fortune and good looks cannot last forever. Decline is inevitable. It can be embraced with dignity but this eludes some performers, who simply go on playing the same...

29th September 2015
BY Colin Yeo

Statement of Changes to the Immigration Rules HC 437 has been published. Most of the changes are fairly minor or technical but not all. From the explanatory notes: The purpose of these changes is to: implement section 53(1) of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 (“the 2015 Act”) which provides that the...

17th September 2015
BY Colin Yeo

The Upper Tribunal has given judgment in a test case on ETS appeals and judicial reviews: R (on the application of Gazi) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (ETS – judicial review) IJR [2015] UKUT 327 (IAC). It is essential reading for anyone directly affected by the ongoing...

18th June 2015
BY Colin Yeo

Immigration applicants cannot rely on telephone calls with Home Office operators, the Upper Tribunal has held in the case of R (on the application of Zia and Another) v Secretary of State for the Home Department IJR [2015] UKUT 191 (IAC).

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19th May 2015
BY Colin Yeo

Having just finished drafting grounds for judicial review in a case involving a refusal of a Tier 4 study application on the grounds that the applicant was not a “genuine student” I was interested to see the new case of R (Mushtaq) v Entry Clearance Officer of Islamabad, Pakistan (ECO –...

17th May 2015
BY Colin Yeo

The High Court has found part of the Tier 1 Entrepreneur rules to be irrational in the case of R (on the application of Sabir & Ors) & Anor v The Secretary of State for the Home Department [2015] EWHC 264 (Admin). Despite succeeding on part of the challenge, though, the case...

23rd March 2015
BY Colin Yeo

The Court of Appeal condemns the complexity of the Points Based System in the case of Hossain & Ors v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2015] EWCA Civ 207. Lord Justice Beatson says at paragraph 30: The detail, the number of documents that have to be consulted, the...

16th March 2015
BY Colin Yeo

The case of Ahmed and Another (PBS: admissible evidence) [2014] UKUT 365 (IAC) concerns the ‘genuineness’ test that was introduced for entrepreneur applications as the final death knell for the original concept of the Points Based System as a tool for objective decision making. On appeal, the tribunal holds that s.85A of the Nationality,...

12th August 2014
BY Colin Yeo

Having been overruled by the Court of Appeal in the case of Rodriguez [2014] EWCA Civ 2 (FM post here), Mr Justice McCloskey, President of the Immigration and Asylum Chamber of the Upper Tribunal, has returned to the vexed issue of ‘evidential flexibility’ in a trio of cases: Durrani (Entrepreneurs: bank...

27th June 2014
BY Colin Yeo

The case of Rodriguez, Mandalia and Patel [2014] EWCA Civ 2 is to be reconsidered by the Supreme Court, this months grants of permission reveals. The case concerns the ‘evidential flexibility’ policy that I think was first publicly revealed here on Free Movement. It is a chance for the Supreme Court...

12th June 2014
BY Colin Yeo

A new Statement of Changes to the Immigration Rules (HC 198) corrects an earlier botched attempt to change the rules by fiat and remove discredited Educational Testing Services (ETS) as providers of the English language test needed for many modern immigration applications. ETS was the subject of a BBC Panorama investigation which...

10th June 2014
BY Colin Yeo
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