I am looking forward to voting Labour on 4 July. I live in the Bristol Central constituency and am fortunate to have Thangam Debbonaire as my local MP. I’m doubly pleased to be able to vote for a Labour government and for Thangam personally. She would be a brilliant Secretary...
Following last year’s legacy backlog clearance exercise, the backlog of cases has shifted to either end of the asylum process. There are tens of thousands of cases that are sitting in the inadmissibility process and not even being considered, and then there are also tens of thousands of cases that...
Over and over again we hear that refugees should claim asylum in the first safe country the reach. There are variations on the theme. Genuine refugees claim asylum in the first safe country. Refugees should or even must claim asylum in the first safe country. The asylum seekers coming to...
One of the changes wrought by the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 (remember that?) is an apparent increase in the standard of proof in refugee status claims. This change applies to everyone who applied for asylum on or after 28 June 2022. There has been a huge waiting time for...
In AM (Belarus) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2024] UKSC 13, in a judgment delivered by Lord Sales, the Supreme Court has held that a man living in the United Kingdom for twenty six years with no immigration status was not entitled to status on human rights...
It is ten years since I launched Free Movement membership. In that decade, I’ve increased the cost just once, in 2022. Two years later, it is time for another increase. The new prices will take effect from 1 May 2024 for all renewed subscriptions and for entirely new subscriptions. If...
The government has launched a formal and anodyne-sounding “Consultation on reforms to social housing allocations“. It proposed a new series of bars to being allocated certain types of social housing, including a “UK connection test” which would be passed by being a British citizen, EEA citizen with equal treatment rights,...
Naturalisation is the legal process by which a non-British adult becomes a British citizen. An application has to be made to the Home Office and if the criteria set out in the British Nationality Act 1981 are met then the application will be granted and the person can attend a...
The short answer is “yes, criminals can be denied refugee status.” There is a moral dimension to the Refugee Convention. But the criminal offence or offending must be particularly serious in nature. The offending or behaviour must be serious in nature because denying refugee status to a person and sending...
A “returning resident” is a resident of the United Kingdom with settled status who returns to the country after a lengthy absence abroad. Ordinarily, when a person refers to “returning residents” they might be talking about a temporary resident who leaves for a short time, for example on holiday or...
