Thousands of people may have been unlawfully held in immigration removal centres in recent years, the court of appeal has ruled. This opening sentence from a Guardian article the other day refers to the case of R (Hemmati & Ors) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWCA...
A British citizen can be deprived of his citizenship if he shows disloyalty to the state, the Court of Appeal has found in the case of Pham v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWCA Civ 2064. The case is interesting, thought-provoking and concerning in equal measure. Taking...
Last week the Court of Justice of the European Union upheld the UK’s approach to the Worker Registration Scheme in force between 2004 and 2011 for citizens of new EU countries. The case is C-618/16 Prefeta v UK. The judgment in effect endorses the Home Office view that time spent...
Despite our remarks in previous blogs about the useless nature of British Overseas Citizen status, a series of judgments handed down by the High Court this summer demonstrate that this unusual version of British nationality is sufficiently valuable to encourage the pursuit of lengthy and expensive litigation against BOC passport...
If there is one piece of advice practitioners take away from this post, let it be this: in ANY application you prepare, take the time and the effort to fully explain and particularise your client’s circumstances in your letter of representations. In applications for leave to remain under Article 8,...
The Court of Session has refused to make a reference to the Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxembourg to determine whether the UK’s notice that it is leaving the EU under Article 50 can be cancelled. Given that the subject matter involved “the most contentious and political...
In the wide-ranging and somewhat sorry case of El Gazzaz v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWCA Civ 532 the Court of Appeal has confirmed the strength of the presumption in favour of deporting foreign criminals. Criminal convictions and mental ill-health Sherif El Gazzaz, an Egyptian national,...
The Court of Appeal last week issued “authoritative guidance” on Article 3 medical challenges against removal, reflecting the European Court of Human Rights’s decision in Paposhvili v Belgium. Lord Justice Sales, giving the court’s judgment in AM (Zimbabwe) & Anor v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWCA...
When the Supreme Court delivered judgment in R (Kiarie and Byndloss) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2017] UKSC 42, immigration practitioners across the UK took an audible sigh of relief. In that case, the Supreme Court held that the “deport first, appeal later” regime which operated under...
The Secretary of State’s decision to revoke an IT consultancy’s Tier 2 sponsor licence was upheld before Christmas in R (Sri Prathinik Consulting Limited) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2017] EWHC 3204 (Admin). A stream of case law was cited, most notably Lord Justice Tomlinson’s leading judgment...
In Sala (EFMs: Right of Appeal : Albania) [2016] UKUT 411 (IAC), the Upper Tribunal held that there was no right of appeal against a decision by the Home Office to refuse a residence card to the extended family member of an EEA citizen. The Court of Appeal declared on...
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...
The Court of Appeal has dismissed the challenge brought by campaign group Britcits to the restrictive Immigration Rules on the admission to the UK of parents, grandparents and other adult dependent relatives. The case is BRITCITS v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2017] EWCA Civ 368. On 9...
In Butt v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2017] EWCA Civ 184 the Court of Appeal considers the weight to be given to the relationship between parents and their adult dependent children in the Article 8 balancing exercise. It is notable – and this was the principal reason...
The Government has today lost a major case in the High Court on the issue of whether a Parliamentary vote is required before the Government issues notice under Article 50 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union to the EU that the UK is leaving. If the...
The Court of Appeal has given further guidance on the convoluted and badly drafted statutory presumptions on human rights in UK law. Trying to make sense of interlocking provisions in the UK Borders Act 2007, the Immigration Rules as amended (and amended and amended) and the Immigration Act 2014, the...
The Court of Appeal has found that the Exceptional Case Funding regime for legal aid is lawful, overturning the decision of Collins J in the High Court ([2015] EWHC Admin 1965). The issues are distinct to R (on the application of Gudanaviciene & Ors) v The Director of Legal Aid...
The challenge by organisation Britcits to the virtual prohibition on the entry of adult dependant relatives introduced in 2012 has been dismissed: R (on the application of Britcits) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2016] EWHC 956 (Admin). Despite the disappointing outcome, though, there is a distinct silver...
Interesting and controversial case on X-rays and age assessment from the Court of Appeal: London Borough of Croydon v Y [2016] EWCA Civ 398 (26 April 2016). Essentially, the Court holds that the claimant would have to agree to an age assessment by means of a dental X-ray in order...
The case of G and H v Upper Tribunal and SSHD [2016] EWHC 239 (Admin) is notable as the first reported case of a successful substantive Cart JR against a decision of the Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) refusing permission to appeal from the First Tier Tribunal (FTT) to...
UPDATE 26/2/16: permission to appeal from the Court of Appeal has been granted so the Court of Appeal judgment will not be the last word. Supreme Court grants our client @publiclawprojct permission tochallenge racially discriminatory Residence Test: https://t.co/hw46QnTnWZ — Bindmans LLP (@BindmansLLP) February 26, 2016 In Public Law Project v...
Fundamental Rights Conference: a public law perspective Saturday 10 October 2015, 9:45 – 17:00 Venue: LSE New Academic Building 54 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London WC2A 3LJ CPD: 5.5 Garden Court Chambers’ Public Law Team in association with Legal Action Group and the London School of Economics invites you to join...
The Court of Appeal turns its attention to the admission of family members outside the requirements of the Immigration Rules in the case of Secretary of State for the Home Department v SS (Congo) [2015] EWCA Civ 387. The judgment came out in April and I omitted to write it...
The Court of Appeal condemns the complexity of the Points Based System in the case of Hossain & Ors v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2015] EWCA Civ 207. Lord Justice Beatson says at paragraph 30: The detail, the number of documents that have to be consulted, the...
Back in 2006, even before this blog first began and in the aftermath of his predecessor’s resignation, then Home Secretary John Reid declared that his department was “not fit for purpose”. A huge backlog of some half a million cases had been uncovered and the department would aim to deal...
UPDATE: see report of Supreme Court judgment here. The judgment is now out in the long awaited case of MM v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2014] EWCA Civ 985, the test case challenging the minimum income threshold for spouses wishing to enter the United Kingdom. The Court...
The Court of Appeal has finally grappled with the question of how to apply the best interests of children in an immigration context and given detailed guidance on how judges should approach the exercise. The judgment, in the case of EV (Philippines) & Ors v Secretary of State for the...
There has been a significant decision in the Inner House of the Court of Session – the Scottish equivalent to the Court of Appeal – on the Home Office’s use of language analysis for the determination of origin, or ‘LADO’. The decision allowing the two conjoined appeals both by a...
The Court of Justice of the European Union handed down judgment in the case of Germany v Y and Z [2012] EUECJ C-71/11 on 5 September 2012. This is one of the first Court of Justice cases to consider the definition of a refugee and the terms of Directive 2004/83/EC,...
Welcome to the weekly Free Movement newsletter! After several months of uncertainty following December’s pause, a written statement will be made today by the Secretary of State for the Home Department on the processing of Syrian protection claims (h/t Jon Featonby). The big news last week was the announcement of...
Welcome to the weekly Free Movement newsletter! Another week, another newly surfaced problem with eVisas. Today it was reported that the Security Industry Authority (“an executive non-departmental public body, sponsored by the Home Office”) is not accepting eVisas as official ID for its licence application process. To state the obvious,...
Welcome to the weekly Free Movement newsletter! Just spotted this – a challenge has gone in on the pause to settlement applications from Syrian refugees. I have been saying for a while that I think this is where the stronger challenge is with the pause, given the different test at...
The mantra of “safe and legal routes” is regularly repeated by the government when justifying increasingly draconian legislation in an attempt to prevent refugees from travelling to the UK under their own steam. The argument is that refugees should use these safe and legal routes instead of arriving in small...
Asylum lawyers like me tend to focus on just one clause of the Refugee Convention: the definition of a refugee. This is the gateway to formal recognition as a refugee and is therefore of vital importance to any person seeking asylum. From this definition, set out at Article 1A(2) of...
May is over and the immigration white paper has finally been published, so Sonia spends a bit of time at the beginning of this month’s podcast reliving the horrors of that. Andrew covers a very wide range of topics in this episode, from deprivation of citizenship to “self sponsorship” to...
Welcome to the weekly Free Movement newsletter! The fallout from the white paper continues, unsurprising given the almost total lack of clarity in it. The Independent Monitoring Authority has had to put out a statement reassuring those with leave under the EUSS. By the looks of immigration message boards, MPs’...
The Home Secretary has had an absolute howler in the Upper Tribunal, it is one of those decisions that is worth a read in full if you have the time. It is a successful judicial review challenging a refusal to recognise further submissions as amounting to a fresh claim. This...
