On the face of it, refugee status and humanitarian protection seem like two sides of the same coin. Both are a form of international protection granted to a person in need. Both result in a grant of five years’ permission to remain in the UK on ...

Adult dependent relative visas have one of the highest refusal rates of all immigration routes. Between 2017 and 2020, 96% of applications were refused. In this article I look at why these applications often go wrong and what you can do to try make th ...

One of the most common UK immigration myths is that there is a maximum permitted stay of 180 days in a year (or six months in 12 months) for UK visitors.  This myth has been propagated not just by migrants but also by advisers and even UK Border Forc ...

The British Nationality (Regularisation of Past Practice) Act 2023 came into force on 29 June 2023. It inserts a new section 50B into the British Nationality Act 1981. Section 50B definitively and retrospectively confirms the British nationality statu ...

The Home Office has emailed sponsor licence holders today to announce a few small but significant improvements that used to clog up the sponsor management system. Annual certificate of sponsorship (‘CoS’) allocations will now be automatica ...

The adult dependent relative rules have been buried in Appendix FM since their inception on 9 July 2012. From 1 June 2023, they have been transposed into their own standalone Appendix Adult Dependent Relative. The new appendix was announced in the 9 M ...

What’s better than a plan for immigration? A new plan for immigration. July saw the publication of the Government’s New Plan for Immigration: Legal Migration and Border Control policy paper. Not much of the content can really be described ...

Despite intense ministerial focus on inflatable dinghies, most unauthorised entrants to the UK have traditionally arrived by lorry. In 2019, more than 10,000 people were discovered to have arrived in the UK concealed in a vehicle; still more will have ...

British businesses have long relied on workers from the European Union to come in for short or medium-term projects. Before Brexit, this was frictionless from an immigration perspective. People arrived, people worked, people left and businesses were h ...

In April 2021 the High Court held that Her Majesty’s Passport Office was wrong to insist on signed consent for child passports from an abusive father overseas. That judgment has now been robustly upheld by the Court of Appeal following a disastrous ...

On 1 July 2021, the British Nationality Act 1981 (Immigration Rules Appendix EU) (Amendment) Regulations 2021 (SI 2021 No. 743) introduced a new section 10A to the British Nationality Act 1981. This new section is aimed at ensuring that certain childr ...

Travel to the UK is opening back up, but not as we previously knew it. The news has been replete with examples of EU citizens being denied entry at UK airports and detained for removal. These stories are nothing new to jaded non-European ears. But for ...

From ‘Citizens of the UK and Colonies’, to ‘Commonwealth Citizens’, to ‘subject to immigration control’: the legislative erosion of the Windrush generation’s British citizenship rights is laid bare at paragrap ...

Huson v Secretary of State for the Home Department (Entry Clearance Officer) (Rev 1) [2021] EWHC 885 (Admin) looks like a case about a 19-year- old’s entitlement to the right of abode. We don’t see many right of abode cases these days, mai ...

The proposed Super League for top European football clubs has attracted immense legal as well as sporting interest, with The Lawyer magazine even running a live blog on the subject. Much of the focus is on legal ways to strangle the proposed competiti ...

Section 4B of the British Nationality Act 1981 entitles people with British National (Overseas) citizenship to register as British citizens if they: do not have any other citizenship or nationality, and have not, since 19 March 2009, “renounced, ...

British citizenship by descent is underpinned by the principle of jus sanguinis (“right of blood”). This allows citizenship to be passed down “through the blood” to the first generation of children born abroad. Subsequent gener ...

Upholding an earlier High Court decision, the Court of Appeal has confirmed that the Home Office’s £1,012 fee for registering children as British citizens is unlawful. The case is R (Project for the Registration of Children As British Citizens ...

New Immigration Rules setting up a UK visa scheme for British National (Overseas) citizens in Hong Kong were published as part of a statement of changes on 22 October 2020. These new rules had been heavily trailed in a detailed summer policy statement ...

The Immigration Health Surcharge (IHS) is a fee levied on the majority of UK visa applications. The Immigration Health Surcharge is on top of other Home Office immigration fees and designed to land in a different government pocket. Also sometimes know ...

“Forcing me to leave the UK will not be in my child’s best interests” is a phrase often used by parents seeking to remain in the UK. Enny Choudhury has written an excellent briefing note on the body of law behind the phrase and the Home Office&# ...

The Home Secretary has a lot of power over naturalisation, the process by which foreign nationals can acquire British citizenship. The criteria for naturalisation are set out in the British Nationality Act 1981, but that Act also empowers the Home Sec ...

On 30 September 2020 the Home Office updated its good character policy for naturalisation to make it even harder for EU nationals to become British citizens.  The new policy doubles the period of time, from five years to ten years, during which certa ...

In Begum v Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) [2020] EWCA Civ 918, the Court of Appeal has ordered that Shamima Begum be granted leave to enter the UK so that she can participate in her deprivation of citizenship appeal. The court also orde ...

Simon Cheng, a former British consulate worker in Hong Kong, was allegedly abducted by the Chinese authorities during a trip to mainland China and tortured for fifteen days in August 2019. His account is terrifying. Cheng was a vocal supporter of the ...

In this briefing we look at the British National (Overseas) citizenship status held by an estimated 2.9 million people in Hong Kong. Before we begin, a quick reminder that there are six different types of British nationality: British citizenship ...

In a statement to Parliament today about Hong Kong, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab confirmed a new bespoke UK immigration route for British National (Overseas) citizens and their dependants. BNO status is a previously obscure form of British nationali ...

Fair play to the litigants and their lay representative for their perseverance in the Scottish appeal case of Saleemi [2020] CSIH 32. Their tenacity is remarkable: the Home Office refused their applications for leave to remain, the First-tier Tri ...

If you’ve been struggling to keep up with the avalanche of immigration news and Home Office U-turns since lockdown began, you’re not alone. I’ve thrown together this immigration track and trace post to catalogue the major immigration ...

No recourse to public funds (‘NRPF’) is a condition imposed on the majority of UK visa holders preventing them from claiming benefits. In R (W, A Child By His Litigation Friend J) v Secretary of State for the Home Department & Anor [2020] EWH ...

The Immigration and Nationality (Fees) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2020 (SI 2020 No. 294) come into force on 6 April 2020. They introduce a handful of fee tweaks, with the most significant changes being for children whose natural father is a man o ...

French chef Claude Bosi, holder of two Michelin stars for his Chelsea restaurant, published his Home Office refusal letter on Instagram today:           View this post on Instagram                   I have been in England for 23 years an ...

What follows is a real case from my practice. Names have been changed. My clients (let’s call them Mr and Mrs Restaurant) have run a restaurant since 2004. Their establishment is beloved in the local community, especially amongst families. It feels ...

In a case that sent me googling the definition and pronunciation of Note Verbale (“a diplomatic communication prepared in the third person and unsigned: less formal than a note but more formal than an aide-mémoire”; pronounced nawt ver-ba ...

R (Al-Enein) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWCA Civ 2024 is another valiant but failed attempt to challenge the Home Office’s good character policy in relation to applications for British citizenship. The issue in this case was ...

As we’ve highlighted in recent blog posts, the Immigration Rules aggressively punish overstaying, to the point where accidentally staying beyond the expiry date of your visa even by just one day will basically ruin your life. “So what?”, you ...

The controversial English Court of Appeal long residence case of Ahmed has now been endorsed north of the border by the Court of Session in Mbomson v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] CSOH 81. Lord Malcolm’s decision is short: althou ...

Following on from my McGill & Co. colleague Darren’s recent post on the consequences of overstaying, I thought I would illustrate his point with a few case studies. The following examples are all derived from real cases that I have recently ...

You’ve just had a fantastic summer holiday in, let’s say, Greece — away from the daily grind, the misery of Brexit and British summertime weather. Sunshine every day, beach swimming, late nights, great wine, even better food. You’re basica ...

Every immigration lawyer in the UK will, at least once in their career, be sat in front of a nonchalant non-visa national (usually American, Canadian or Australian) who is blissfully unaware that they have either overstayed their leave as a visitor, b ...