The government was granted permission to appeal in the Rwanda litigation in July. This post provides an update on the current state of play ahead of the Supreme Court hearing. You can read Free Movement’s coverage of the Court of Appeal’s judgment here and here. In essence, the Court of...
We are a bit behind the times this month, catching up from the summer. This time Sonia and I cover not one but two statements of changes, the Illegal Migration Act, asylum withdrawals, the massive increase in fees, several legal updates on the rights of EU citizens and a load...
With the number of asylum claims on the rise across Europe and around the world, the discussion on safe routes for people seeking asylum is not unique to the UK. I thought it would useful to look at what processes other countries have in place for receiving refugees aside from...
While advisers qualified at IAA Level 2 can lodge notices of appeal against immigration and asylum decisions, they are not authorised to do substantive appeals work. This includes paper appeals work and making representations to, or appearing before, the courts or tribunals. In this unit we will look at which...
There are three main ways in which British citizenship can be lost. British citizens can: Deprivation There are two separate powers of deprivation (see Pirzada (Deprivation of citizenship: general principles) [2017] UKUT 196 (IAC)). First, a person’s citizenship status may be deprived under section 40(2) of the 1981 Act if the...
The Immigration Rules are widely considered to be inflexible and unforgiving — qualities that often result in harsh outcomes for individual migrants. For many people, complying with the onerous requirements of the Rules is not even an option. Some people who wish to enter or stay in the UK simply do...
Article 8 family life cases outside the Rules are for people with family in the UK who cannot meet the normal requirements under Appendix FM for a family visa. Categorising this basis of application as “outside the Rules” is somewhat inaccurate. Appendix FM of the Immigration Rules has, in effect, codified...
Refugees will be sent their decision via email or post. They may need to request that their original documents are returned to them. Successful outcome If the claim is accepted, an asylum seeker will generally be granted five years’ refugee status. Successful asylum applicants are allowed to live, work and...
Sources of interpretation The definition of a refugee is set out at Article 1(A)(2) of the 1951 UN Convention on the Status of Refugees. This is most commonly referred to as “the Refugee Convention” and is to be read with the 1967 New York Protocol. A refugee is a person who: Owing...
IAA level 2 advisers are expected to have a detailed knowledge of the structure and sources of immigration law, the procedures for making an application and the key principles of immigration control. In these next two units we go over these foundational concepts, before making a start on the different...
We have been flagging up concerns about the Home Office use of withdrawals for a couple of months now. We have covered the changes to the immigration rules relating to the withdrawal of asylum claims that come into effect on 7 August 2023, and published a briefing on withdrawals. The...
If you married an EU national in the UK after 31 December 2020, you can’t get leave to remain under the EU Settlement Scheme unless you previously had or applied for an EEA residence card or family permit as their durable partner. That remains the case even if you would...
The Illegal Migration Act 2023 has now been published, after receiving Royal Assent on 20 July 2023. Previously, we have covered the provisions of what was then the Illegal Migration Bill in detail, so for the purposes of this article we look at what substantive changes have been made during...
This month Sonia and I discuss the Rwanda judgment (we’re saving that to the end as our good news story), a couple of fairly lengthy immigration and asylum history blog posts I’ve been working on for a while, several asylum developments and also our Refugee Week content, some procedural updates,...
A would-be student stopped on arrival in the UK was wrongly denied a solicitor in interview, the High Court has found in R (on the application of Kumar) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2023] EWHC 1741 (Admin). The facts Mr Kumar arrived at Manchester Airport with a...
Can a judge ignore part of a Home Office decision if their representative doesn’t mention it in court? No, said the Court of Appeal in Shyti v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2023] EWCA Civ 770. The case The appellant, Mr Shyti, was challenging a decision to deprive...
This post reflects on last week’s extraordinary Court of Appeal judgment on the Rwanda policy. You can read our initial take on this here. Appeal to the Supreme Court The government has already announced its intention to seek leave to appeal to the UK Supreme Court. The key issues that...
The Supreme Court has held that there was no legal obligation to consider the equality impact of excluding Palestinians from the UK’s resettlement scheme for refugees from Syria. The design of the scheme was therefore lawful. The case is R (on the application of Marouf) v Secretary of State for...
The Court of Appeal has found, by a majority, that the Rwanda plan is unlawful as Rwanda is not a sufficiently safe country. In short, the Rwandan authorities are not yet reliably able to sort genuine from non-genuine refugees, and therefore there is too great a risk that genuine refugees...
Last week the Supreme Court found that a financing scheme to help individuals qualify for an Investor visa did not comply with the requirements of the immigration rules. The case is R (on the application of Wang) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2023] UKSC 21 and the...
The unduly harsh test in deportation cases has been subject to litigation for years and we have written about it in several articles, most recently in relation to the Supreme Court case of HA (Iraq). The Court of Appeal has now published its judgment in Sicwebu v Secretary of State...
Following the abolition of the “not in accordance with the immigration rules” ground of appeal by the Immigration Act 2014, several cases have considered the relevance of the immigration rules in human rights appeals. The Upper Tribunal has neatly encapsulated the current position in a recent case, Caguitla (Paragraphs 197...
New and accessible guidance has been released by the Home Office on the deprivation of British citizenship under section 40 of the British Nationality Act 1981, detailing the approach caseworkers should take when deciding such cases, replacing previous Deprivation and nullity guidance. The guidance covers instances where an individual may...
The European Court of Human Rights has given formal notification to the UK government of an application by an Iraqi asylum-seeker (anonymised as NSK) challenging his removal to Rwanda. They also found that several of the Rule 39 interim measures to prevent individual applicants being removal to Rwanda have now...
The High Court has upheld the effectiveness of the ouster clause in the Judicial Review and Courts Act 2022, which ousts the jurisdiction of the courts in Upper Tribunal permission to appeal decisions except in very limited circumstances. The decision is R (Oceana) v Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber)...
In a colourfully-worded and expressive judgment, the High Court has found that challenges to the Home Secretary’s decision to refuse citizenship naturalisation applications can only be challenged on grounds of irrationality. The judgment is R (Sandy) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2023] EWHC 640 (Admin). The facts...
This post provides an update on legal challenges to the Home Office’s policy and practice of requiring people on immigration bail to wear Global Positioning System (GPS) devices. You can read more about the policy and the legal framework here and here. To summarise, in August 2021 the Home Office...
The Illegal Migration Bill was published yesterday. You can access the Bill here and the Explanatory Notes here. While it remains a Bill, the individual provisions are referred to as clauses and once it becomes an Act — as it surely will — they are referred to as sections. The...
Shamima Begum has lost the latest round in her legal battle against the decision to strip her of her British citizenship and exile her abroad. The Special Immigration Appeals Commission that heard her case concluded that she was a victim of trafficking, which was not something the Home Secretary who...
The Upper Tribunal has confirmed that a recognised victim of trafficking who is also an asylum seeker, partly fearing re-trafficking on return as well as political persecution, should have been granted permission to stay (leave to remain) whilst their asylum claim was pending, in line with findings in R (KTT)...
In this blog post I am going to take a look at the second main way that the British state strips some citizens of their citizenship status. In a previous blog post I looked at behaviour-based denaturalisation. Here I’m looking at fraud-based denaturalisation. In contrast to the considerable literature addressing...
The power to denaturalise a British subject on the basis of their behaviour was first introduced by legislation in 1918. With some adjustments, the power remained broadly the same until as late as 2002. Essentially, only a person who had naturalised as British could be stripped of their citizenship and...
It may be possible for a stateless person to register as British under Schedule 2 to the British Nationality Act 1981, instead of applying for limited leave to remain as a stateless person. The online form to use is Form S, and accompanying Guidance can be found here. The Home...
On 14 October 2022 the Home Office released a second iteration of their caseworker guidance for handling applications to register as a British citizen in special circumstances (section 4L, inserted by the Nationality Act Borders Act 2022). The caseworking scenarios from the first version are now supplemented by fresh examples,...
Yes, although only in very limited circumstances. This was the conclusion of the Court of Appeal in Alam & Anor v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2023] EWCA Civ 30. For those who don’t know, the House of Lords held in Chikwamba v Secretary of State for the...
The case of Muslija (deprivation: reasonably foreseeable consequences) [2022] UKUT 337 (IAC) makes it clear that the reasonably foreseeable consequences of deprivation of British citizenship do not include predicting the outcome of a subsequent human rights appeal. The case concerns an Albanian national who obtained refugee status, and subsequently citizenship,...
Now that the High Court has decided that the Rwanda policy is lawful, at least at a general level, many people will be wondering when the government will attempt another removal flight. This question will be no doubt be causing a lot of worry to people in Home Office accommodation...
The Upper Tribunal has issued country guidance about the risk from gangs in El Salvador. In EMAP (Gang violence – Convention Reason) El Salvador CG [2022] UKUT 00335 (IAC), the Upper Tribunal makes helpful findings about the general context in which persecution by gangs takes place in El Salvador and...
The High Court has concluded in the case of AAA and others v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2022] EWHC 3230 (Admin) that the UK government’s Rwanda plan is lawful. The individual decisions in the case were inadequate and will need to be re-made, but that is no...
