Chucking people out of a country they were born in is hard. It usually takes something pretty dramatic or pretty terrible — or both, as in the case of Azerkane v The Netherlands (application no. 3138/16). The facts Mr Azerkane was born in the Netherlands to Moroccan parents. His parents...
Reports by the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration, David Bolt, now follow a familiar pattern. Mr Bolt and his team carry out an inspection of a certain area of Home Office activity. A report on possible areas of improvement is drawn up and sent to the department for...
By Alex Piletska and John Vassiliou Welcome to your first day as an Administrative Officer, the most junior civil service grade. We’re sure you will fit right in. To help you get to grips with all the technical mumbo-jumbo that can get in the way of reducing net migration, we’ve...
Page contentsClose family membersDurable partnersOther extended family membersFamilies where the relationship has ended or the EU sponsor has died or left the UK Close family members The full definitions of a child, spouse etc. appear in Annex 1 of Appendix EU. A spouse is someone married to an EU citizen....
The case of MY (refusal of human rights claim) Pakistan [2020] UKUT 89 (IAC) represents yet another cutback in the rights of migrant victims of domestic abuse, and in appeal rights more generally. The Upper Tribunal has ruled that the Home Office can simply refuse to engage with a human...
The Home Office has accepted the need to simplify the “complex and confusing” Immigration Rules and says that the work is already underway. In an official response to the Law Commission’s recent report on the subject, the department says that “we have already begun the process of reviewing, simplifying and...
The Upper Tribunal has rejected an attempt by the Home Office to ignore the clear meaning of an Immigration Rule. Sahebi (Para 352(iii): meaning of “existed”) Pakistan [2019] UKUT 394 (IAC) is about paragraph 352A(iii), which covers reunion for the family members of people who have been granted refugee status...
All eyes were on Birmingham yesterday for the launch of the Labour Party’s manifesto. Billed as “radical” by Jeremy Corbyn, its stated purpose is to offer “real change” and to build a fairer Britain. But this sense of radicalism does not wholly extend to Labour’s immigration policy. Those who were...
Bureaucrats are not generally known for their creative thinking. But show a Home Office immigration official an application for asylum or a visa and watch their imagination run riot. All these are real excuses, communicated in official government letters, for declining a visa, refusing asylum or disbelieving some aspect of...
Role: Immigration Caseworker/Solicitor Hours: part-time 18.5 hrs Based: at our Coventry Office Salary: negotiable up to £29,704 pro rata based on experience and qualifications We seek an experienced caseworker to manage a specialist immigration and asylum advice service for victims of domestic violence. Central England Law Centre is the UK’s...
Over 900,000 people have applied for EU settled status so far. By the end of June 2019, the Home Office had processed 806,000 applications, granting full settled status in 65% of cases and pre-settled status in 35% of cases. The department says that nobody has been refused status outright. There...
In MS (appealable decisions; PTA requirements; anonymity : Belgium) [2019] UKUT 216 (IAC), President Lane and Upper Tribunal Judges Gill and Finch provide important guidance on jurisdiction in EEA deportation and Article 8 appeals and the correct procedure for raising “cross appeals” in the Upper Tribunal. I represented the claimant...
The inelegant phrase “a sufficiency of protection” originates in a now obscure series of tribunal determinations from the 1990s. It was eventually entrenched in law by the House of Lords case of Horvath [2001] AC 489, but the diverse judgments of their Lordships combined with the inherent tensions in the...
Where further submissions are to be made because of a change in country situation, the starting point will be to establish whether credibility will still be in issue and if it was undermined in the original decisions. Where credibility is not in issue, the further submissions will be based on...
Consistently the most popular article on Free Movement, somewhat depressingly, is the list of immigration and nationality fees. The fees charged by the Home Office for processing visa, settlement and nationality applications are high, set far above the actual administrative cost to the department. Fees constitute a significant source of...
The Home Office has announced that seven Service and Support Centres are now open to cater for particularly complex immigration cases. Appointments are free, and “experienced UKVI staff will provide a face to face service and help people throughout their application”. The centres are located in Belfast, Cardiff, Croydon, Glasgow,...
It is a decade since the UK agreed to lift its immigration reservation to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, recognising that “migrant” children are, well, children too. Section 55 of the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009 was enacted to this end, creating a duty for...
A statement of changes to the Immigration Rules was published today, 11 December 2018. The main changes are to introduce the pilot scheme for short-term agricultural workers that was announced earlier this year, and to expand the domestic violence settlement scheme to cover refugees. The more fundamental changes to Tier...
Family members of certain UK residents and British citizens can apply to come to, or remain, in the UK on the basis of that relationship. Such family members include partners, children, parents and adult dependent relatives. The rules for partners, parents and children are found at “Appendix FM” (FM stands...
1.1. The Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association (ILPA) drafted the following report as a joint commentary by experienced immigration practitioners on the EU Settlement Scheme. We hope this expertise assists in the development of the scheme and to achieve its intended purpose of safeguarding the rights of EU citizens living in...
On 2 November 2018, UK Visas and Immigration launched a new system for visa applications made within the UK. It involves an overhauled online application process and new Visa and Citizenship Application Service centres operated by outsourcing firms Sopra Steria. The first centre opened on 9 November. Premium Service Centres will...
The Home Secretary has published the results of a review into DNA testing at the Home Office, apologising to migrants who were told that genetic testing was compulsory for certain family visas. Sajid Javid also announced a potentially wide-ranging review of the immigration system more generally in a sign of...
Page contentsCode of StandardsWhat is a “lawyer” anyway and what do they do?Can lawyers lie for their clients?Can lawyers lie to their clients?Can lawyers reveal what their client has told them?Do lawyers tell their clients what to say?Can lawyers represent criminals?Can lawyers choose their clients?What happens when the lawyer’s interests...
Level 1 advisers are permitted to make straightforward applications within the Immigration Rules. For example, a visit visa application or a straightforward spouse visa application would be allowed at OISC Level 1. The OISC defines permitted OISC Level 1 work as “applications that rely on the straightforward presentation of facts...
An adult who is not a British citizen can apply to become one. This process is known as naturalisation. People will normally be eligible to apply for naturalisation under section 6 of the British Nationality Act 1981 if they meet certain requirements. These include residence requirements. The basic residence requirement...
Page contentsClose family membersDependencyMarriages of convenienceValidity of marriageSeparated spousesRights of family membersExtended family members in EU lawRights of extended family membersRetained rights of residence for family membersDeath of EEA nationalEEA national leaves the UKTermination of marriage or civil partnership Close family members An EU citizen exercising an initial right of...
Page contentsIs there a right of appeal?Asylum and human rights casesEEA casesCitizenship deprivation casesEU Settlement Scheme casesGetting an appeal lodgedHigher appeals Is there a right of appeal? There are four types of situation where there is a right of appeal: Asylum and human rights cases In asylum and human rights...
Part 9 of the Immigration Rules contains the grounds for refusal. These rules enable or even require the refusal of an immigration application that otherwise meets the criteria for success. For example, a person who meets all requirements for a Skilled Worker visa might still be refused entry clearance if...
As we have seen, much of immigration law involves applying for permission to enter or remain in the UK. That is why immigration lawyers so often speak in terms of “applications” in their trade. The importance of submitting valid applications cannot be underestimated. Submitting an application which is not valid...
Family members (“applicants”) of certain people (“sponsors”) can apply to come to, or remain, in the UK on the basis of their family relationship. Such family members include partners, parents, children and adult dependant relatives. The people who are able to sponsor them are British citizens, people with indefinite leave...
The Immigration Rules can be daunting to approach, and it is often difficult to find what one is after. Basically, they are divided into an introduction, various “parts”, and many appendices. Page contentsStructure of the Immigration RulesNavigating the Immigration RulesStructure of each categoryLocating a ruleKey conceptsDependantsPoints-Based Immigration System sponsorshipMoney, money,...
Baigazieva v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWCA Civ 1088 is about what happens to a non-EEA citizen spouse if they divorce their EEA citizen partner. Article 13(2) of the Citizens Rights Directive 2004 lays down a set of criteria on how the non-EEA citizen can retain...
Theresa May declared in an interview with the Telegraph in May 2012 that she wanted to create a “really hostile environment” for irregular migrants in the UK. In this blog post we look at the evolution of the hostile environment, consider what measures fall within the overarching policy and examine...
Nearly three years after the main appeal provisions of the Immigration Act 2014 commenced, the Upper Tribunal has turned its attention to the question lying at the heart of almost all appeals lodged since then: what is a human rights appeal anyway? There are two new cases which more or...
Migration policy experts have warned that the system of registering EU citizens to stay in the UK after Brexit risks excluding the most vulnerable, who will end up as unlawfully resident if they fail to register or are turned down. A briefing from the influential Migration Observatory at the University...
Here’s your round-up of the immigration and asylum stories that made national headlines this week. Transgender asylum seekers Leila Zadeh of the UK Lesbian & Gay Immigration Group and Paul Dillane of rights group Kaleidescope Trust are quoted in a Guardian piece covering attacks on LGBTI people in asylum accommodation....
Welcome to the November 2017 edition of the Free Movement immigration update podcast. This month I cover a few bits of immigration news, several cases on detention and then run through some other case law. I end with a mention for some new explainer pieces we put together. The material...
This month I cover a few bits of immigration news, several cases on detention and then run through some other case law and end with a mention for some new explainer pieces we put together. The material is all drawn from the November 2017 blog posts on Free Movement. The...
New research helps practitioners identify best practice in representing female asylum seekers writes Debora Singer MBE, Senior Policy Adviser at Asylum Aid. What do women who have been through the asylum appeals process think of their legal representative? I liked the last experience … everyone was so positive … we’re...
The difficulty of presenting asylum claims based on religion is well known. Such claims raise difficult evidential problems, which are addressed in this detailed post by Colin Yeo. But AS (Iran) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2017] EWCA Civ 1539 seems to pose a novel difficulty: should...
