Author Archive

The Home Office has published a new statement of changes to the Immigration Rules (HC 17). It is largely focused on changes to the asylum system following the passage of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 and the agreement with Rwanda to export refu ...

Newly released government documents justifying the refugees-to-Rwanda policy will be independently scrutinised, the immigration inspector has announced. The Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration (ICIBI) is inviting tenders for a count ...

The Nationality and Borders Act 2022 hit the statute books yesterday. The Home Office says that the Act “puts into law that those who arrive illegally in the UK – who could have claimed asylum in another safe country – can be considered as � ...

There should be a higher minimum wage just for social care workers rather than looser visa rules, the Migration Advisory Committee has recommended. Releasing a new MAC report on the impact of Brexit on adult social care, chair Brian Bell said: We main ...

This decision forms the next episode in the saga of cases arising from the Test of English for International Communication (“TOEIC”) certificates obtained from test centres in the United Kingdom administering tests set by the Educational T ...

The Law Commission is working on an 18-month project to roll up all the UK’s Acts of Parliament on immigration into one giant Immigration Act. A spokesperson confirmed to Free Movement that the law reform body has agreed to carry out a consolida ...

The Home Office has been ordered to make a decision in principle on an Afghan judge’s visa before making him come out of hiding to lodge a formal application. The case is R (JZ) v Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affa ...

The Nationality and Borders Bill returns to Parliament today. The House of Lords is being presented with the Bill for a second time after MPs voted to remove all its previous attempts to drastically water down the legislation; typically the unelected ...

The Home Office is writing two special visa schemes for Ukrainians into the Immigration Rules and adding a third for people already here. Statement of changes HC 1220 codifies the existing Ukraine Family Scheme and Homes for Ukraine Scheme (described ...

An immigration lawyer has settled a defamation case against the Sun after being monstered for her work with detained asylum seekers. The newspaper had accused Uma Devi Rajasundram of Milestone Solicitors of “shamelessly touting a price list̶ ...

The Office of the Immigration Services Commissioner is changing. For one thing, there will soon be no office — or at least, not a physical one. The OISC is ditching its London headquarters and going fully remote, as well as regional. From 1 Apri ...

Two thirds of British people oppose the government’s Borders Bill plan to deny proper residence rights to certain refugees, according to the Law Society of England and Wales. A Law Society poll of almost 2,000 people, carried out on 1 March, sho ...

The government has published 205 pages worth of changes to the Immigration Rules. The changes are being phased in over the next few months, starting on 6 April 2022. Highlights include: Children who live in the UK for seven years can get immigration p ...

An immigration appeal is over if the appellant dies, the Upper Tribunal has held. The case is FZ (human rights appeal, death, effect) Afghanistan [2022] UKUT 71 (IAC). The man known only as FZ lived in the UK from 2000 to 2016 before being deported to ...

Closing the Investor visa route to new applicants with immediate effect was necessary, the Home Secretary said this week. If potential applicants had been given a decent period of notice, it might have attracted a last-minute flood of undesirables who ...

The President of the First-tier Tribunal has put out new guidance on witnesses dialling in to give evidence from abroad. It is decidedly negative, stressing the need to get consent — via the Foreign Office, in a prescribed manner — from th ...

The Investor visa route has been closed to all new applicants with “immediate effect”, the Home Office announced this afternoon, citing “security concerns” and “wider corruption”. This follows multiple media reports ...

The Home Office has suspended its policy of forcing migrants who successfully apply for public funds to wait longer for settlement. In response to a parliamentary question, migration minister Kevin Foster said on 10 February: We are currently reviewin ...

I can do no better than adopt Tom Royston’s summary of R (DK) v Revenue and Customs [2022] EWCA Civ 120: in an important decision about the rights of refugees to financial support for children, the Court of Appeal in England and Wales has agreed ...

Another in the rich vein of legacy EU law appeals lodged pre-Brexit. FE v HMRC (CHB) [2022] UKUT 4 (AAC) is about the right of Chen parents — the primary carers of self-sufficient EU citizen children — to claim benefits, in this case child ...

The Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) has updated its guidance on exceptions to open justice. Guidance Note 2022 No 2: Anonymity Orders and Hearings in Private runs to 53 paragraphs, twice the length of its 2013 predecessor, issued under ...

Regular readers will remember the problems caused by Comprehensive Sickness Insurance, or CSI. Essentially, certain EU citizens in the UK pre-Brexit were expected to have private health insurance. If they didn’t, it can still cause them legal pr ...

The Upper Tribunal has put out a country guidance ruling on the Iranian government’s monitoring of dissidents on Facebook. Previous case law on the general human rights situation in Iran continues to hold good, but the new decision makes additio ...

The Home Secretary does have the legal power to cancel someone’s indefinite leave to remain after all, the Court of Appeal has held. The decision in R (C1) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (Rev1) [2022] EWCA Civ 30 reverses the tenta ...

One of the Home Secretary’s more startling powers is to take people’s British citizenship away where they acquired it by fraud or it is “conducive to the public good”. In the latter case, losing citizenship often amounts to exi ...

The UK government’s attempt to strip a British-Pakistani woman of her citizenship without telling her was unlawful, a split Court of Appeal has confirmed. Lord Justice Baker and Lady Justice Whipple held that the regulation allowing notice of ci ...

Social care workers can get Skilled Worker visas from 15 February 2022. The change was first announced on Christmas Eve and has now been confirmed in a statement of changes to the Immigration Rules (HC 1019), published yesterday. Employers (but not pr ...

The Inner House of the Court of Session has rejected an appeal by HM Revenue and Customs against a ruling that newly recognised refugees are entitled to backdated child tax credit. The case is HMRC v Adnan [2022] CSIH 2. Mr and Mrs Adnan first applied ...

Employers who want to avoid the possibility of a fine for hiring an unauthorised migrant are well advised to carry out right to work checks. Such checks are not mandatory, but where companies do carry them out, the Home Office advises that “all ...

Fast-track age assessments for newly arrived asylum seekers were unlawful, the High Court has found. The case is R (MA & Anor) v Coventry City Council & Anor [2022] EWHC 98 (Admin). Doughty Street Chambers has a detailed summary and Diane Tayl ...

What does it mean to be ‘westernised’? It is striking that a term that is used so frequently in this jurisdiction has never been more closely defined. I would suggest that this is because, like obscene material, it is because we ‘know it when we ...

The High Court has thrown out a challenge arguing that the free legal advice given to migrants in detention centres is rubbish. Mr Justice Calver held that statistical evidence that many legal aid firms provide a poor service was unreliable and that & ...

Airport “eGates” where people can scan their own passport may make it harder for border officers to catch human trafficking, inspectors have warned. A review of eGates by the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration highlight ...

The Home Office has conceded that EU citizens being lined up for deportation retain full residence rights in the meantime. This is so long as they have applied to stay in the UK under the EU Settlement Scheme and are protected by the Brexit Withdrawal ...

At least 464 people have been stripped of their British citizenship since the law allowing it was relaxed 15 years ago, Free Movement analysis shows. Home Office figures record 175 people being deprived of their citizenship on national security ground ...

Just over a year ago, the Home Office introduced new rules on deeming asylum claims “inadmissible” — rejected out of hand, without consideration on the merits. At the time, Colin pointed out that without agreements on sending people back to ...

The Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme formally began yesterday. The definition of resettlement is elastic: for now, the scheme is only for people “already evacuated and in the UK”. New arrivals are not yet being accepted. Afghan resettle ...

The Court of Appeal has quashed the convictions of three asylum seekers jailed for between two and six years for assisting unlawful immigration after piloting small boats across the English Channel. The case is Bani v The Crown [2021] EWCA Crim 1958. ...

Welcome to episode 95 of the Free Movement immigration update podcast. This month we cover some developments on EU citizens’ rights, several cases on immigration appeals, the latest work visa statistics, and then a few court and tribunal judgments ...

The Home Office has issued new guidance to immigration enforcement officers, called simply Obstruction. This refers to the criminal offence of obstructing an immigration officer in section 26(1)(g) of the Immigration Act 1971, which can see activists ...