I missed this at the time and only saw it thanks to Joshua Rosenberg’s helpful Substack. SW v United Kingdom (App no. 87/18) was about a judge making adverse findings about a social worker and referring her to her professional body without givin ...

In a change to which some of us may struggle to adjust, tribunal judges are now to be addressed in court or correspondence as “judge” rather than “sir”, “madam” or (cringe) “ma’am”. So say the Lord ...

The idea of a ‘white list’ of countries which are presumed to be safe and whose nationals will be swiftly returned is not a new one. In fact, it has been a feature of British law since section 2 of the Asylum and Immigration Act 1996 came ...

Strategic litigation is a hot topic. Jolyon Maugham’s controversial Good Law Project provokes a visceral marmite effect. Some people absolute love it. Some, not so much. Sometimes referred to as ‘impact’, ‘test case’ or & ...

With many thanks to Donald Campbell for sharing, you can find the Home Office research report on asylum journeys here. It’s well worth a read in full but here’s a few selected highlights: Social networks often play an important role in sha ...

Back in the heady days of 2019, journalist Jon Stone started what turned out to be a very long thread on Twitter. Over and over and over again, he wrote “Abolish the Home Office”. Every tweet linked to example after example after example o ...

Figures the Ministry of Justice was instructed to publish by the Office for Statistics Regulation show that just 8% of all deportation appeals lodged in 2020/21 were allowed on human rights grounds only. The one-off statistical release follows from th ...

We’ve published a new practical skills course for Free Movement members on professional conduct and ethics in immigration advice. The topic is particularly important for immigration lawyers, who often represent vulnerable clients and are expecte ...

Welcome to the October 2022 episode of the Free Movement immigration update podcast. This month, Colin and Sonia talk politics, asylum, the statement of changes to the immigration rules and case law. The episode is a bit longer than usual as there was ...

A new report has been published this morning by HM Chief Inspector of Prisons on the controversial short term holding facility for refugees at Manston in Kent. The inspection took place in late July 2022, before the current Home Secretary, Suella Brav ...

Small boat crossings attract a lot of media and political attention. The images we see of refugees arriving on our shores clearly upset some people. The Conservative Member of Parliament for Dover and Deal in successive tweets, for example, says cross ...

Suella Braverman was Home Secretary for 43 days.   ...

Welcome to the September 2022 episode of the Free Movement immigration update podcast. This month I am joined again by “immigration lawyer about town”, as she put it, Sonia Lenegan. She is in danger of becoming a co-presenter if she carries on lik ...

Suella Braverman’s speech to the Conservative Party conference yesterday evening confirmed two things. She really doesn’t like the Human Rights Act, the Modern Slavery Act or the European Court of Human Rights. And that the problems with the UK im ...

In a bizarrely unhinged interview with the Sun on Sunday, Home Secretary Suella Braverman has laid into modern slavery victims and the family members of postgraduate students. These two unlikely groups are apparently the latest bogeymen to be stopping ...

It is now twenty two years since I first started work as an asylum lawyer at the Oakington detention centre, a converted former barracks near Cambridge. I have seen a lot of change to the asylum system in that time. But many of the changes have ultima ...

It has been reported that thousands of Russian men are fleeing their country in order to avoid being conscripted into the army. Miles long queues of cars have built up at the border into Georgia. This comes on top of the tens of thousands of young Rus ...

The Sunday Times reports that the Truss government intends to follow through on Truss’s pledge during the leadership race to raise the cap on seasonal agricultural workers. “Reform” of the visa system is also planned to “attrac ...

Welcome to episode 104 of the Free Movement immigration update podcast. This month I am joined by “immigration lawyer about town”, as she put it, Sonia Lenegan. Taking pity on me after my solo effort last month, Sonia is the legal and poli ...

Suella Braverman is the new Home Secretary, replacing the outgoing and failed Priti Patel. It is Braverman’s first cabinet position. She previously served as a controversial Attorney General. In July 2022 Braverman launched her own bid to become ...

Priti Patel has resigned as Home Secretary. She jumped before she was pushed, with incoming new Prime Minister Liz Truss expected to replace the failed Patel with former Attorney General Suella Braverman. Patel was appointed Home Secretary by Boris Jo ...

Too often, we all see clients who are at the mercy of the local authority housing system and who are shifted about from accommodation to accommodation with no real stability in their lives. This treatment only compounds the problems they already face ...

In Joseph (permission to appeal requirements) [2022] UKUT 00218 (IAC), the appellant was a national of Trinidad and Tobago who had resided in the UK since 2007. She had a costs order of £400 made against her in 2014, following an unsuccessful judicia ...

Welcome to episode 103 of the Free Movement immigration update podcast. This month — the first in something like five years flying solo — I’m starting with some material on asylum and trafficking then quickly going over a bit of immi ...

Formal warnings have recently been issued by the Judicial Conduct Investigations Office to two sitting immigration judges. One was to Tribunal Judge Ali Sarwar for ”failing to issue timely decisions in several cases.” The other was to Tribunal Jud ...

Conservative Party leadership contender Liz Truss has pledged to expand the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme if she becomes Prime Minister. I have been avoiding commenting on some of the ludicrous and appalling immigration policies we’v ...

Hubert Howard arrived in the United Kingdom in 1960, aged four. He was a citizen of the United Kingdom and Colonies back then and was fully entitled to enter the country of his nationality. The law changed around him over the years but he carried on w ...

Mr Justice Ian Dove has been appointed President of the Immigration and Asylum Chamber of the Upper Tribunal with effect from 2 October 2022. Whether this turns out to be a case of nominative determinism remains to be seen, but he is certainly conside ...

The current/outgoing government on 22 June 2022 introduced to Parliament the Bill of Rights Bill. For those (like me) who have been struggling to keep up with the news of late, the legislation will, if it becomes law, scrap and entirely replace the Hu ...

Scaling a citizenship and nationality practice profitably comes with significant challenges due to the knowledge-intensive nature of the work, which can’t be delegated.  Consequently, business owners spend hours researching the law for individu ...

We are looking for several full time advisors but we are willing to employ on a part time basis for the right candidate We will only consider applications with relevant legal experience. Qualifications needed are OISC level 2/3 or Solicitor with IAAS ...

“Theresa May exercised her free movement rights with a trip to Florence on Friday…” So began CJ’s first blog post for Free Movement, published on 26 September 2017. Nearly five full years later — a period sufficient to see off three Home Sec ...

In what I calculate to be the fifth Supreme Court case addressing the meaning of the words used in Theresa May’s 2014 reforms of deportation law, the justices have rejected three linked Home Office appeals seeking to reinstate deportation orders ...

The European Court of Human Rights has concluded that a maritime pushback operation conducted by Greek coastguards in 2014 violated the right to life of the 11 people who drowned in the process. The case is Safi and Others v Greece (application no. 54 ...

Welcome to episode 102 of the Free Movement immigration update podcast. This month we start with elements of the Borders Act 2022 coming into force before moving on to Appendix Private Life and Appendix FM. We then review the latest case law on crimin ...

On 1 July 1962, sixty years ago today, the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962 came into effect. It is hard to overstate the importance of this landmark legislation. Aliens were already subject to a separate, full system of immigration control under the ...

The headnote for PB (“Cart” judicial reviews: “new” grounds) Sri Lanka [2022] UKUT 154 (IAC) seems to bear little relation to the facts or the reasons in the case: The Supreme Court in Cart v the Upper Tribunal [2011] UKSC 28; [2011] Imm AR 70 ...

The government has announced the details of its much-trailed policy of treating some refugees differently to others based on their mode of arrival in the United Kingdom. The Home Office refers to this as “differentiation” but the word ...

After five years with Free Movement, CJ McKinney is, sadly, moving on for a new job at the House of Commons Library. He started here as deputy editor in 2017 and was promoted to editor in 2021. His final day will be Friday 22 July. I’ll be ...

The headnote from KB (Art 8: points-based proportionality assessment) Albania [2022] UKUT 161 (IAC): Although judges in the immigration jurisdiction should adopt the “balance sheet” approach to ECHR article 8 proportionality assessments, they ...