Deportation proceedings pit the rights of the individual against those of the state, appointed guardian of the public interest. And as very clearly stated in primary legislation, the deportation of foreign criminals is in the public interest. The law ...

Boris Becker, three-time Wimbledon champion and many people’s favourite German, has been sentenced to two and a half years’ imprisonment for offences under the Insolvency Act 1986. Assuming Becker hasn’t acquired British citizenship, will he be ...

One of the principal arguments run by people seeking to resist removal to Somalia is that their living conditions on return would be so dire as to amount to a breach of the UK’s obligations under the European Convention on Human Rights, and specific ...

In MI (Pakistan) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2021] EWCA Civ 1711, the Court of Appeal continues to unpick pre-HA (Iraq) deportation jurisprudence, here reversing the Upper Tribunal decision of Imran (Section 117C(5); children, unduly ...

In SM (Zimbabwe) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2021] EWCA Civ 1566, the Court of Appeal has reiterated the correct approach to deportation appeals involving the potential separation of children from their parents. This unusual appeal ...

There are only two things that legal aid lawyers can do to mitigate the losses they inevitably face by undertaking publicly funded advice work: reduce the time they put into each fixed fee case, or reduce the number of legally aided cases they take on ...

In Jallow v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2021] EWCA Civ 788 the Court of Appeal looked at the weight that should be given to the rehabilitation of a foreign national offender in their appeal against deportation. Not a great deal, conclu ...

In Asif (Paragraph 276B, disregard, previous overstaying) Pakistan [2021] UKUT 96 (IAC) the Upper Tribunal has confirmed that previously disregarded overstaying between periods of leave should be treated as lawful residence for people making 10-year l ...

In R (AM) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (legal “limbo”) [2021] UKUT 62 (IAC) the Upper Tribunal considered the extraordinary case of a Belarusian man who had been in the UK on immigration bail since 2003. The fundamental question fo ...

A key tenet of UK deportation law is that British nationals cannot be deported: section 3(5) of the Immigration Act 1971. And yet, Sajid Zulfiqar, a man born British in the UK, will, barring any further appeals, be deported to the land of his fathers: ...

In KB (Jamaica) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2020] EWCA Civ 1385 the Court of Appeal followed the recent decisions of HA (Iraq) v SSHD [2020] EWCA Civ 1176 and AA (Nigeria) v SSHD [2020] EWCA Civ 1296 on the interpretation of the � ...

In Hoque & Ors v SSHD [2020] EWCA Civ 1357 the Court of Appeal addressed the issue of gaps in lawful residence in ten-year long residence applications. It found that the previous authority of R (Masum Ahmed) v SSHD [2019] EWCA Civ 1070 – which ...

In AA (Nigeria) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2020] EWCA Civ 1296 the Court of Appeal has considered its first deportation appeal since the important case of HA (Iraq) v SSHD [2020] EWCA Civ 1176. It confirms that the “unduly har ...

If you are a deportation lawyer, stop what you are doing and read HA (Iraq) v SSHD [2020] EWCA Civ 1176, handed down by the Court of Appeal on 4 September 2020. It will take you about three hours, but it will be worth it. The lead judgment of Lord Jus ...

Where a person is subject to a deportation order but wishes to remain in the UK, they must apply for the order to be revoked. The case of FH v SSHD [2020] EWHC 1482 considers this process and the applicable rules. The rules on revocation The Secretary ...

We have written often on Free Movement about the meaning of the term “unduly harsh“. It is the test which people facing deportation must meet where arguing that their separation from a partner or child would amount to a breach of their hum ...

In LE (St Vincent and the Grenadines) v SSHD [2020] EWCA Civ 505 the Court of Appeal upheld a decision to deport a Royal Marine who had fought for this country in Iraq and Afghanistan over a 14-year career in the armed forces. It is difficult to imagi ...

In Birch (Precariousness and mistake; new matters : Jamaica) [2020] UKUT 86 (IAC) the Upper Tribunal looks at the “precarious leave” provisions where a person wrongly believed that they had indefinite leave to remain. It also identifies a loophole ...

When I was a young lad, there was a rule in our house that a girlfriend could only come to stay if the relationship was a “serious” one. During one particularly heated exchange regarding the enforcement of this rule, I recall a tedious and ...

Patel (British citizen child – deportation) [2020] UKUT 45 (IAC) considers the importance of British citizenship held by children of people being deported from the UK. The case concerned an appeal brought by Mr Patel, an Indian citizen, against ...

In a pointed reminder, perhaps, to those in government threatening to “update” the Human Rights Act, Lady Hale began her Supreme Court judgment in the case of R (Jalloh) v SSHD [2020] UKSC 4 thus: The right to physical liberty was highly p ...

Prior to the closure of the Tier 1 (Entrepreneur) route, the main requirement was evidence that an applicant had access to funds for investment in their proposed venture. The Immigration Rules permitted applicants to rely on their own funds, or altern ...

In a review of Amelia Gentleman’s book The Windrush Betrayal, David Goodhart of the Policy Exchange think tank said this: Over … [the] period [2004-2018] the number of voluntary removals rose sharply from 3,566 in 2004 to 28,655 in 2016, perhaps s ...

The Court of Appeal has given judgment in Akinyemi v SSHD (No 2) [2019] EWCA Civ 2098, a long-running appeal concerning the deportation of a man who was born in the UK in 1983, and has never left. In reversing (again) the decision of the Upper Tribuna ...

For those lawyers, like my Lord and myself, who have spent many years practising in the family jurisdiction, this is not a comfortable interpretation to apply. But that is what Parliament has decided… So held Lord Justice Baker, giving judgment in S ...

The Court of Appeal has given judgment in CI (Nigeria) v SSHD [2019] EWCA Civ 2027, providing further guidance on the law relating to the deportation of foreign criminals, and in particular on the meaning in section 117C(4) of the Nationality Immigrat ...

Just when you thought the rule excluding chefs at take-away restaurants from the Tier 2 Shortage Occupation List had been tested to destruction, there arrives yet another valiant attempt to navigate this uber-niche corner of a corner of the Immigratio ...

In an apparent effort to dissuade anyone from reading the rest of the judgment in R (Sanneh) v SSHD [2019] EWCA Civ 1319, Lord Justice Jackson began ominously: This is an appeal about costs. The usual rule is that the loser in any litigation pays the ...

If a foreign criminal wins their deportation appeal, can the Home Office try and deport them again, even where there has been no further offending? In MA (Pakistan) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWCA Civ 1252, the Court of Appea ...

In the case of Secretary of State for the Home Department v PG (Jamaica) [2019] EWCA Civ 1213 the Court of Appeal considered the meaning of “unduly harsh” in deportation cases, overturning the decisions of both of the tribunals that had pr ...

The deportation case of a Nigerian man with sickle cell disease, resident in the UK for almost three decades, has been bouncing around the UK court system for over six years. It appears the case has finally been settled by the Court of Appeal – on i ...

Migrants who have spent ten years in the UK with continuous and lawful leave can apply for indefinite leave to remain (ILR). Can leave be “continuous” if it involved short gaps between lawful periods of leave where an applicant has oversta ...

Where a company sponsors a worker from overseas to fill a vacancy in the UK they must only do so if that vacancy is “genuine”. The case of R (Suny) v SSHD [2019] EWCA Civ 1019 arose from a disagreement between a sponsored worker and the Ho ...

Hot on the heels of the decision in Sajjad comes another mind-bending Home Office decision on Tier 1 (Entrepreneur) visa extensions, this time relating to job creation.  In R (Khajuria) v SSHD [2019] EWHC 1226, an Indian entrepreneur had created the ...

One of the requirements for Tier 1 (Entrepreneur) migrants extending their visas in the UK is to show they have invested £200,000 that they previously showed was available for investment in their initial applications. The important case of R (Sajjad) ...

Last week the Home Office announced the establishment of its compensation scheme for those affected by the Windrush scandal (the Scheme). We have published a briefing on how the Scheme will work, who is entitled to compensation, and the key documents ...

Almost a year after it first broke, the Home Office has opened a compensation scheme for those affected by the Windrush scandal (the Scheme). It expects to pay out up to £310 million to victims. We provide in this post a brief outline of how the Sche ...

The judgment in SSHD v SS (Jamaica) [2018] EWCA Civ 2817 continues a trend in which ‘foreign criminals’ who had been successful in their initial tribunal appeals against deportation have had those decisions overturned in the Court of Appeal. Free ...

The Home Office considers some foreign nationals living in the UK to be a threat to national security. Sometimes, to deport those individuals (as the government no doubt prefers) would be unlawful, because of how they would be treated on return to the ...

The toxic wasteland of the Daily Mail’s back catalogue on the topic of immigration needs no introduction. It is perhaps no great surprise that, asked to spend some time at Taylor House immigration tribunal recently, the pithy headline for Mail r ...