All Articles: Article 8
Objective evidence must be considered when deciding “very significant obstacles” to integration
The Court of Appeal has emphasised that consideration of whether there are very significant obstacles to a person’s reintegration is a practical test which must take into account objective evidence. The case is NC v Secretary of State for the Ho ...
6th December 2023Damages claim for asylum delay dismissed by Court of Appeal
The Court of Appeal has dismissed a claim for damages against the Home Secretary for a five month delay in granting refugee status, following a successful appeal, to a person with severe mental health issues. The case is FXJ v Secretary of State for t ...
30th November 2023Deception case returned to the Upper Tribunal after material error of law made
The Court of Appeal has sent a case back to the Upper Tribunal for reconsideration after a failure to properly consider article 8 and the making of a material error in relation to the appellant’s husband’s nationality. The case is Gurdeep ...
20th November 2023Making sense of sole responsibility for child visas in immigration law
The “sole responsibility” immigration test comes into play where one of the parents of a child is relocating to the United Kingdom and one parent remains abroad. The United Kingdom’s immigration rules effectively presume that a child ...
15th November 2023What are the 10 and 20 year rules on long residence?
The immigration rules allow people to apply to remain in the UK on the basis of long residence. Those here lawfully can apply for indefinite leave to remain following 10 years’ continuous lawful residence in the UK. Those who had periods of overstay ...
27th October 2023Getting an adult dependent relative visa is hard but not impossible
Adult dependent relative visas have one of the highest refusal rates of all immigration routes. Between 2017 and 2020, 96% of applications were refused. In this article I look at why these applications often go wrong and what you can do to try make th ...
29th August 2023“Model example” of Article 8 balancing exercise in High Court extradition case
Despite strong public interest considerations in favour of respecting extradition agreements, the High Court has decided that a Polish national who came to the UK as a fugitive eight years ago will not be extradited. The case is Dobrowolski v District ...
13th April 2023High Court considers how the loss of work may engage article 8
The treatment of a person’s job in human rights claims has been ambiguous and inconsistent in previous High Court decisions, but the judgment in Kulumbegov v Home Office [2023] EWHC 337 (KB) usefully corrals the decisions of Denisov v Ukraine (app. ...
10th March 2023Is Chikwamba still relevant?
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 Sec ...
24th January 2023Latest figures show only 8% of deportation appeals allowed on human rights ground only
Figures the Ministry of Justice was instructed to publish by the Office for Statistics Regulation show that just 8% of all deportation appeals lodged in 2020/21 were allowed on human rights grounds only. The one-off statistical release follows from th ...
21st November 2022Major European judgment on age assessment process
The European Court of Human Rights has handed down a significant judgment concerning the age-assessment process and rights of child asylum seekers. In Darboe and Camara v Italy (Application no. 5797/17), the court found that the Italian government had ...
30th September 2022No unlawful decision on right to work for the dependant of an asylum seeker
OH v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2022] UKAITUR JR2021LON001003 concerns the rights of a dependant of an asylum seeker to work in the United Kingdom. OH challenged a decision to refuse his request to work whilst he was a dependant of hi ...
29th September 2022Challenge to “deport first, appeal later” process rejected
The Upper Tribunal has rejected a challenge to the Article 8 compliance of the “deport first, appeal later” system despite previously having ordered the Home Office to bring the claimant back to the UK to ensure he had an effective appeal. ...
28th June 2022Supreme Court allows foreign criminal deportation case
The Supreme Court has allowed the appeal against the deportation of a Jamaican man who arrived in the UK aged ten. The case is SC (Jamaica) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2022] UKSC 15. The judgment covers the application of the co ...
16th June 2022Foreign convictions in deportation appeals
When the Home Office is deporting someone for being convicted of a criminal offence, does it matter what country that conviction is from? In practice, probably not. This seems to be the effect of the Court of Appeal’s decision in Gosturani v Secr ...
14th June 2022Afghan boy unlawfully removed from UK for 18 months can claim damages
The Court of Appeal has held that the unlawful removal of a vulnerable Afghan child and the 18 months of disruption to his private life entitles him to damages under the Human Rights Act 1998 and under EU law. The case is QH (Afghanistan) v Secretary ...
12th April 2022No “historical injustice” in harsh but correct refusal of immigration application
Someone correctly refused leave under the Immigration Rules as then in force is not the victim of a historical injustice, and therefore can’t rely on this as strengthening a subsequent Article 8 claim. So ruled the Court of Appeal in Rahaman & A ...
22nd March 2022Can children and parents apply to remain after seven years’ residence?
From a child’s perspective, seven years of residence in the UK can be literally a lifetime. It may be the sum of all the child’s experience and the UK may be the only home they know in any meaningful sense. On top of that, children do not make the ...
18th October 2021Court of Appeal clears up how Article 8 works in Dublin III family reunion cases
In R (BAA) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2021] EWCA Civ 1428 the Court of Appeal has clarified the reach of Article 8 in Dublin III family reunion judicial reviews. Unlawful refusal to accept Syrian asylum seeker The case was about an ...
13th October 2021Supreme Court dismisses deportation appeal of man living in UK since he was 9
In Sanambar v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2021] UKSC 2 the Supreme Court has dismissed the appeal against deportation of an Iranian citizen who arrived in the United Kingdom aged nine in 2005. He had committed several knifepoint robber ...
16th July 2021“Reasonable” to expect UK-born 11-year-old to move to Bangladesh, Court of Appeal says
The protection afforded to children who are long-term UK residents has been further diluted in a new Court of Appeal decision, NA (Bangladesh) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2021] EWCA Civ 953. The judgment is the latest in a line of ca ...
30th June 2021Getting permission to remain in the UK as an adult dependent relative: not likely
Since the introduction of highly restrictive rules for adult dependent relatives there have been numerous stories, all desperately sad, of parents trying and failing to join or remain with their children in the UK. Mobeen v Secretary of State for the ...
16th June 2021Windrush family priced out of UK win human rights challenge
In this edition of “have I got immigration news for you”, we look at the case of Mahabir v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2021] EWHC 1177 (Admin), in which the High Court found that the Home Office had caused a “colossal interferenc ...
11th May 2021Belarusian man in limbo since 2003 wins permission to remain in landmark case
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 ...
23rd March 2021Ignore what the Immigration Rules say about deportation, Upper Tribunal says
In Bikanu (s.11 TCEA; s.117C NIAA; para. 399D) [2021] UKUT 34 (IAC), the Upper Tribunal has confirmed that paragraph 399D of the Immigration Rules has no relevance to the human rights exceptions to deportation set out in section 117C(4)-(6) of the Nat ...
16th February 2021Deportation appeal not a “dress rehearsal” says Court of Appeal
Lowe v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2021] EWCA Civ 62 is about the role of the Upper Tribunal in deportation appeals. The role of an appellate court when reviewing the findings of fact made by the court below sounds straightforward: it ...
27th January 2021Minor offence can trigger deportation, human rights court confirms
The European Court of Human Rights has confirmed that the final offence committed by someone before deportation action is taken against them does not need to be particularly significant if they have a history of serious offending. In Munir Johanna v D ...
21st January 2021Tribunal defines “historic injustice”
Lawyers are prone to creating “terms of art”, i.e. a phrase which has a specific meaning within a particular branch of law, distinct from its usage in ordinary English. In Patel (historic injustice; NIAA Part 5A) India [2020] UKUT 351 (IAC ...
12th January 2021Is carrying a knife enough to get you deported?
Earlier this year the Court of Appeal looked at the meaning of an offence causing “serious harm” for the purposes of deportation law. Being convicted of such an offence is one of the ways a person can find themselves facing automatic depor ...
15th December 2020UK breached European convention in deporting man without proper human rights assessment
It’s rare to get a slobber-knocker of a case from the European Court of Human Rights like Unuane v The United Kingdom (application no. 80343/17). The court unanimously found that the UK’s supposedly Article 8 compliant deportation rules don’t pr ...
25th November 2020Government can deport people who had successfully appealed against deportation
Last year, Nick wrote up the case of MA (Pakistan) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWCA Civ 1252, summarising it as follows: If a foreign criminal wins their deportation appeal, can the Home Office try and deport them again, even ...
4th November 2020Human rights court approves deportation of man who arrived aged four
In Pormes v The Netherlands (application no. 25402/14), the European Court of Human Rights has approved the deportation of a man who had lived in the Netherlands between the ages of four and 29, on the basis of multiple convictions for indecent assaul ...
11th August 2020There’s actually no right to family life in the UK
Everyone in the UK has the right to respect for their family life under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. But as a migrant from outside the European Economic Area, what do you actually need in order to be able to stay in the UK on ...
30th July 2020When is a foreign criminal not a foreign criminal?
That is the question answered by the Upper Tribunal in SC (paras A398 – 339D: ‘foreign criminal’: procedure) Albania [2020] UKUT 187 (IAC). The appellant was convicted of murder and sentenced to 15 years’ imprisonment. So he is ...
22nd June 2020Strasbourg approves deportation of Dutch-born man from the Netherlands
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 Ne ...
9th June 2020