As a companion piece to our earlier immigration law timeline, here is an attempt at a nationality law timeline. I know that UK nationality law is complex but I confess I had not anticipated quite how long this one would take. With immigration law, muc ...

Welcome to episode 80 of the Free Movement immigration update podcast. This month we start with the EU Settlement Scheme before turning to a couple of cases at the intersection of immigration law and family law. With the slow down in the court system, ...

I’ve put together a timeline of British immigration legislation as an experiment. It is not a complete list for several reasons, but I think it captures the main moments in the history of British immigration law. To include absolutely everything ...

Welcome to episode 79 of the Free Movement immigration update podcast. This month we’re starting with a few asylum decisions, then talk a little about the Shamima Begum case and go over the latest on coronavirus immigration changes. We look at t ...

Over 1,100 people took the Free Movement reader survey this year. I’d like to thank everyone who did so. The positive feedback was enormously encouraging — I read every comment — and the less positive feedback was the whole point of ...

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 a ...

Home Secretary Priti Patel has proposed nothing less than a revolution within the Home Office in response to the Windrush Lessons Learned Review by Wendy Williams. In a statement to the House of Commons yesterday, which should be read in full, Patel o ...

The technical point, or ratio, of MZ (Hospital order: whether a ‘foreign criminal’) [2020] UKUT 225 (IAC) is that a hospital order under section 5(1)(b) of the Criminal Procedure (Insanity) Act 1964 is not a criminal conviction for the pur ...

In MM (section 117B(6) – EU citizen child) Iran [2020] UKUT 224 (IAC ) the Upper Tribunal holds that the seven year rule at section 117B(6) of the 2002 Act (which applies to British children and foreign national children resident for seven years ...

Welcome to episode 78 of the Free Movement immigration update podcast. This month we start with some general discussion about the immigration system and my new book, Welcome to Britain, move on to cover a couple of deportation cases and then look at s ...

My book Welcome to Britain: Fixing Our Broken Immigration System launches today. I was delighted to see it getting some coverage in the Observer yesterday. If you haven’t already you can order a copy from Waterstones, Amazon or from your lo ...

We’re holding a free online event next Monday — our first ever live online event in fact — to mark the launch of my book, Welcome to Britain: Fixing Our Broken Immigration System. The book takes you behind the scenes of the United Ki ...

Statement of changes HC877, of 11 March 2016, gave the Home Office yet another power to refuse applications for leave to enter or remain in the UK. For all applications made on or after 6 April 2016, having a “litigation debt” to the Home Office m ...

In the case of C‑754/18 Ryanair the Court of Justice of the European Union has concluded that a non-EU national who holds a permanent residence card from one EU state, is under EU law, exempt from any domestic law requirement to hold a visa to enter ...

If you would like a signed copy of my upcoming book, released on 29 June 2020, then you can now order such a thing here on Free Movement. Normally I’d be around and doing some live events to sign copies but that obviously is not feasible at the ...

This week is Refugee Week. We’ve got quite a lot to say about the often complex law on asylum and refugees and the purpose of this post is simply to point you in the right direction if you are interested in reading up on the subject. The starti ...

The killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers has shone a light on the ongoing difference in the treatment of black and white citizens in the United States. It is right and proper to think also about racism here in the United Kingdom. As ...

Welcome to episode 77 of the Free Movement immigration update podcast. This month we cover a number of positive court decisions on Article 3, no recourse to public funds and immigration fees. We then mention the main coronavirus updates before turning ...

Who are you and what do you want? That is what we’d like to know, and to find out we have launched our 2020 reader survey. As a thank you I’m offering a free signed copy of my upcoming book, Welcome to Britain: Fixing Our Broken Immigrati ...

The Upper Tribunal has found that the Home Office’s policy for waiving the immigration application fee for destitute immigrants — the fees can add up to thousands of pounds for a family — is unlawful and needs to be widened. The judg ...

Welcome to episode 76 of the Free Movement immigration update podcast. This month we start with an important case concerning the hostile environment and the latest hardline deportation decisions. We then discuss immigration detention, including a case ...

This hardly comes as news to many of those who work with asylum seekers. For many years the icebreaker for training sessions delivered by one of the main foundations working with torture survivors was to instruct attendees to turn to the person to the ...

Taking away people’s citizenship became a popular pastime for Home Secretary Theresa May. After decades of the power being essentially taboo, associated as it was with Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, it was resurrected with a vengeance after 201 ...

There’s a second and updated edition out of James Hanratty’s memoir The Making of an Immigration Judge, available from Quartet Books. I reviewed the previous edition and found it a very interesting and revealing read. The author tells me t ...

On 13 October 1997, the new Labour government published a document on family visas. It was called the Concession Outside the Immigration Rules for unmarried partners and it was a legal landmark. The concession allowed certain foreigners in the UK to a ...

In the case of AM (Zimbabwe) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2020] UKSC 17 the Supreme Court has widened the protection available to seriously ill migrants facing deportation from the UK and subsequent death for want of medical treatmen ...

The Home Office response to the coronavirus crisis has been hesitant at best. To the credit of the department, it has on the whole acted to protect its own staff and the staff of some of its major contractors, albeit sometimes belatedly. Basic steps t ...

Welcome to episode 75 of the Free Movement immigration update podcast. This month we are covering March and there’s a lot to go over. We’ve got some EU law material, some fairly involved appeals law stuff on when a human rights claim gener ...

In Nimo (appeals: duty of disclosure : Ghana) [2020] UKUT 88 (IAC) the Upper Tribunal, consisting of Mr Justice Lane and Mr Ockelton, has held that the duty of candour applying to parties in judicial review proceedings does not apply in statutory appe ...

Business continues as normal at Free Movement. Our product is exclusively an online one, we are used to working remotely and we have contingency plans in place if a staff member is ill or needs to care for family members. We will continue to bring you ...

With international travel closing down due to the coronavirus it is becoming not just unwise but impossible to move from some countries to others. Even if inbound flights are not banned by a country, airlines are finding it increasingly difficult to k ...

We don’t post about many Home Office policy updates but this one is one to be aware of. Changes to DNA policy guidance as follows: Page 6, reference to DNA profile not revealing certain characteristics of a person who provides a DNA sample for t ...

In Mujahid [2020] UKUT 85 (IAC), President Lane holds that where a person applies to the Home Office for indefinite leave to remain and is refused indefinite leave but granted limited leave instead, that decision is not a refusal of a human rights cl ...

Welcome to episode 74 of the Free Movement immigration update podcast. This month we’ve got a couple of Supreme Court decisions to cover then a carousel of other cases on detention, the rights of British children to live with their parents in th ...

In the case of MS (Pakistan) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2020] UKSC 9, handed down today, the Supreme Court has confirmed that the immigration tribunal can and must decide for itself whether an appellant was a victim of trafficking. ...

The Supreme Court has found in the case of DN (Rwanda) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2020] UKSC 7 that the detention of a Rwandan man facing deportation was unlawful because the deportation order on which detention was based was itself ...

Another reported case that would perhaps have been more effective and appropriate as a passive-aggressive Post-it note stuck on the office kettle at Tribunal HQ: Permission should not be granted on the grounds as pleaded if there is, quite apart from ...

In (B)ordering Britain: Law, Race and Empire, published last week by Manchester University Press, Nadine El-Enany argues that British nationality and immigration laws are acts of colonial theft. Having expropriated untold wealth from the countries com ...

Welcome to episode 73 of the Free Movement immigration update podcast. This month we start with asylum, in particular the new Iraq country guidance decision, before turning to the rebranded Global Talent visa and the latest on Brexit. There are a coup ...

Last night a deportation flight took off for Jamaica, despite the protests of MPs and a last minute injunction that saw some removed from the plane. Many of the Jamaican citizens involved grew up in the UK — such as the man who has been here sin ...