“Country and expert evidence is indispensable in supporting an asylum seeker’s case. Asylos helps me – and immigration officials – better understand my client’s circumstances.” – Tori Sicher, Sutovic & Hartigan Asylos is a small charity helping lawyers and refugees prove asylum cases by producing free individual research reports. This...
The Supreme Court has today dismissed the Home Office appeal in the case of Gubeladze [2019] UKSC 31. The judgment affects hundreds of thousands of EU citizens from the so-called Accession Eight (or “A8”) countries that joined the EU in 2004 and means that the United Kingdom unlawfully imposed a...
Since 20 May 2019, people from Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea and the USA have been able to enter the UK using ePassport gates (‘eGates’). British and EU citizens have been able to use eGates since 2008. The Home Secretary, Sajid Javid, said at the time that...
The Court of Appeal has upheld the appeal against deportation of a man sentenced to five years’ imprisonment, in the process providing a good example of the kind of human rights arguments that will sway judges in this notoriously difficult area of law. The court reiterated the high threshold that...
A proposed inquiry into the now infamous abuse of migrants at Brook House detention centre does not go far enough, a High Court judge has ruled. In a judgment handed down today, Mrs Justice May held that an underpowered Prisons and Probation Ombudsman investigation was not sufficient under human rights...
Welcome to the May 2019 edition of the Free Movement immigration update podcast. This was a mercifully quiet month in immigration law, for a change, but there’s still a few decisions from the Court of Appeal to be aware of — particularly on asylum and trafficking — as well as...
SS v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWHC 1402 (Admin) is about when the Home Office can legitimately apply its own policy instead of a country guidance decision from the Upper Tribunal. The High Court has ruled that it was irrational do so when the Home Office...
The percentage of immigration decisions being reversed by judges is at its highest on record, new statistics show. Over 50% of appeals to the immigration tribunal — mostly challenges to Home Office refusals to allow people to stay in the UK — succeeded in the last financial year. The success...
AL (Albania) [2019] EWCA Civ 950 is a new Court of Appeal judgment which says some important things about the approach a tribunal judge should take to factual findings made by another tribunal judge in a related appeal. In this case, AL’s elder brother had claimed asylum on much the...
Tribunal bosses have put their foot down on fast track asylum appeals, refusing the government’s push for an accelerated process for appellants in immigration detention. The Tribunal Procedure Committee said that it would not be re-introducing a system like the Detained Fast Track that the courts found to be unlawful...
Immigration judges must assess whether an asylum seeker had a reasonable opportunity to claim asylum in a safe third country before holding that a failure to do so should damage their credibility, the Court of Appeal has ruled. KA (Afghanistan) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWCA...
The Law Commission has proposed a new surrogacy pathway, replacing the “outdated” existing laws about having a child on behalf of somebody else. The key provisions of the current legislation have remained relatively constant for almost thirty years, despite considerable change in the use of surrogacy arrangements over that period...
We have launched an updated second edition of our Settled Status Handbook on applying to the EU Settlement Scheme. This is our guide for EU citizens and their family members applying for settled or pre-settled status to legally remain in the UK after Brexit. The update partly reflects tweaks to...
It was hailed as an emergency solution to the refugee crisis but figures reveal that only 36 Syrians had been removed from Greece under the “EU-Turkey statement” by the end of 2018, write Taimour Lay and Theodoris Zeis. It is over three years since the “EU-Turkey statement” on the Mediterranean...
The immigration tribunal is piloting a new system of automatically “de-listing” (judge-speak for cancelling or adjourning) appeal hearings where an appellant serves their bundle late. I’ve run into the pilot at Newport, but responses on Twitter suggest that it is taking place all over the country. At Newport, at least,...
There are growing concerns around the Home Office’s treatment of children and young people from Albania, with legal practitioners now raising the alarm about the increasing certification of Albanian asylum applications as ‘clearly unfounded’. At the same time, significant gaps in evidence are consistently acting as a barrier to successful...
Home Office charter flights still involve too much physical restraint of the migrants being removed, according to a watchdog’s annual report. The Independent Monitoring Boards’ Charter Flight Monitoring Team published its annual report yesterday, saying that it “remains concerned” about flights to other European Union countries in particular. Overall, the...
The Court of Justice of the European Union has confirmed that subsidiary protection status must be revoked by member states if they discover that it has been granted in error, even if the applicant did nothing to mislead the authorities. Case C‑720/17 Bilali v Bundesamt für Fremdenwesen und Asylis is...
Two solicitors have been fined for pursuing “spurious” immigration cases — many of which they knew were hopeless because they had advised the client as much. Nurgus Malik and Jusna Begum Miah, who at the time worked for M-R Solicitors in London, admitted several counts of professional misconduct at the...
The Home Office processed around 166,000 applications for British citizenship last year. Most are granted, but some are refused. The most common reason for refusal is failing the ‘good character’ test. Almost 4,000 bids for citizenship were rejected on this ground last year. That makes up 40% of all refusals,...
In March 2018, the Upper Tribunal promulgated the country guidance decision AS (Safety of Kabul) Afghanistan CG [2018] UKUT 118. The tribunal dismissed AS’s appeal and provided guidance on the suitability of Kabul as a site for “internal relocation”. It broadly held that relocation to Kabul was generally safe and...
The government should guarantee the rights of EU citizens living in the UK through legislation to back up the flawed EU Settlement Scheme, an influential committee of MPs has said. In a report published today, the Home Affairs committee invokes the Windrush scandal, says that “lessons must be learned to...
An influential government advisory group has recommended a major expansion of the list of jobs that get priority for work visas. The Migration Advisory Committee (MAC), a crack team of economists that advises the government on immigration, published its recommendation for a new Shortage Occupation List yesterday. Assuming it is...
It’s not often these days that we see a positive result from the Court of Appeal, but just before the bank holiday two out of three Lord Justices declared that Home Office policy on assessing the age of asylum seekers is unlawful. The case is BF (Eritrea) v Secretary of...
Theresa May has just announced her resignation. She will leave office on 7 June 2019, leaving a legacy indelibly associated with two things: Brexit and immigration. The gridlock on the former being, infamously, a function of her obsession with the latter, let us look at what May’s many years of...
The National Audit Office, a government watchdog, has released an authoritative report on the long-running English language testing scandal. The discovery in 2014 that there was widespread cheating on the English tests required for UK visas led to a Home Office crackdown affecting tens of thousands of people, many of...
The Court of Appeal has handed down guidance on “limbo” cases in RA (Iraq) v The Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWCA Civ 850. These are cases where a migrant cannot be removed from the UK because, for example, conditions in their country of origin prevent it...
R (ERA) v Basildon And Thurrock Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust [2019] EWHC 1249 (Admin) is about whether someone who has applied for leave to remain in the UK on human rights grounds can get the same exemption from NHS charges as asylum seekers. The National Health Service (Charges to Overseas...
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 jobs necessary to extend her visa but her application...
The 2016 referendum sent shockwaves through the European community in the UK, but now that the dust has settled, the picture is far less alarming than appeared at first. Various groups who seemed particularly vulnerable in the wake of the vote, including European spouses of British citizens, no longer need...
Welcome to the April 2019 edition of the Free Movement immigration update podcast. This month we start with a big Court of Appeal decision on “paragraph 322(5)” tax cases and the state of play on the new business visas. There’s just one asylum judgment to review, but several on deportation...
The Court of Justice of the European Union has decided in joined cases C‑391/16, C‑77/17 and C‑78/17 M, X and X that recognised refugees who commit serious crimes can be lawfully deprived of their refugee status under EU law and that there is no incompatibility on this issue between EU...
At the risk of sounding negative in the middle of Brexit, there’s a lot wrong with the new innovator visa route. The main problem being that it is effectively closed to migrants, certainly those overseas. Previous articles on the innovator route have focused on how the scheme works — and...
On 2 May 2019, the Home Office published updated guidance on “derivative rights of residence”, which includes the rights of Zambrano carers. Buried in the 63-page document is a fundamental change of policy: potential Zambrano applicants must first make a human rights application under British immigration law. In other words,...
The Court of Appeal has given judgment in two linked cases involving victims of trafficking prosecuted in the UK for offences linked to their trafficking: N v R [2019] EWCA Crim 752. In one of the cases, involving a young Vietnamese man prosecuted for cannabis cultivation, the conviction was overturned....
