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...
Anyone whose life consists of daily references to the Immigration Rules will tell you that the experience can feel a lot like deep ocean exploration in the Mariana Trench: despite constant research, you will still make new discoveries, even when you think there are no further depths to which you...
The Court of Appeal has returned to the legal issues arising from the closure of the Calais refugee camp in September 2016 and section 67 of the Immigration Act 2016, which forced the Home Office to develop a process for admitting unaccompanied children from the camp into the United Kingdom....
The vexed issue of reasonableness, removals and children is back in the judicial spotlight once more in a new Court of Appeal ruling, Runa v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2020] EWCA Civ 514. The case involved an appeal against a refusal to grant Ms Runa, an overstayer,...
In Birch (Precariousness and mistake; new matters : Jamaica) [2020] UKUT 86 (IAC) the Upper Tribunal looks at the “precarious leave” provisions where a person wrongly believed that they had indefinite leave to remain. It also identifies a loophole – a term not used without hesitation, but it is difficult...
Uddin v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2020] EWCA Civ 338 is an important case in which the outgoing Senior President of Tribunals provides the judges who serve in his Immigration and Asylum Chamber with very strong guidance on mixed credibility findings and the assessment of family life....
The Upper Tribunal judgment in MS (British citizenship; EEA appeals) Belgium [2019] UKUT 356 (IAC) confirms that certain EU citizen children in the UK can be considered lawfully resident for the purposes of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, even if they (or their EU citizen parents...
Following on from the Court of Appeal’s recent human rights “cheatsheet” in GM (Sri Lanka) v Secretary of State for the Home Department, we now have a gem of a sequel that is Lal v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWCA Civ 1925. In this case, Ms...
The recent – and by now infamous – case of Re Nasrullah Mursalin [2019] EWCA Civ 1559, in which a paralegal was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment for disclosing papers from family proceedings to an immigration tribunal judge, has generated much concern amongst immigration practitioners about when it is permissible...
In GM (Sri Lanka) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWCA Civ 1630, handed down on Friday, the Court of Appeal provides a helpful summary of where we currently stand with private and family life cases under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. General...
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...
With so much focus on whether an asylum seeker has established a well founded fear of persecution in their country of origin, the question of whether their appeal falls to be allowed under Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights is often given only cursory attention. However, it...
Migrants who would otherwise have no legal right to remain in the UK can appeal against their removal on the basis of their human rights. Usually they rely on Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which protects the right to private and family life. Article 8 is...
The Supreme Court has allowed the appeal in the case of Rhuppiah v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] UKSC 58. Giving the sole judgment, Lord Wilson holds that a “precarious” immigration status is any status short of Indefinite Leave to Remain but allows the appeal on the...
The appeal of Orhan Mendirez [2018] CSIH 65 is an interesting judgment from the Inner House in which both the Upper Tribunal and First-tier Tribunal come in for criticism. Both failed to approach their decision-making task, in an appeal focused on Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights,...
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,...
There are a considerable number of asylum claims in the UK by young Afghan boys and men. The number should not be overstated, though. The latest immigration statistics show that Afghans are still outside the top five nationalities claiming asylum in the UK (excluding dependents). They also record that of...
The test for an Article 8 claim to stay in the UK within the Immigration Rules is whether there are “insurmountable obstacles” to continuing family life outside the UK. But even if an applicant does pass this test, there is a further hurdle: whether removal is disproportionate. An important question...
The Court of Appeal’s decision in Parveen v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWCA Civ 932 seems to be an additional nail in the coffin for the once renowned (and now shut down) Malik Law Chambers, with the court repeatedly criticising the firm’s preparation of the application...
The Court of Appeal in DW (Jamaica) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWCA Civ 797 has stepped in to overturn the First-tier Tribunal’s decision to block the deportation of an individual on the basis of his family life. Page contentsFactual backgroundThe public interest in deportation of foreign...
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. Page contentsCriminal convictions and mental ill-healthDeporting foreign criminals is in the public...
Lord Justices Hickinbottom, Kitchin and Coulson have delivered an interesting judgment concerning the free-standing balancing exercise of Article 8 ECHR in the context of a leave curtailment. The case is Tikka v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWCA Civ 632. The Court of Appeal found that the...
Secretary of State for the Home Department v Said [2018] EWCA Civ 627 is about how long the Home Office can delay making an immigration decision before the applicants can successfully claim for damages under the Human Rights Act 1998. The Home Office was appealing a decision from the High...
The judgment of the European Court of Human Rights in T.C.E. v Germany (application no. 58681/12) has a whiff of Groundhog Day. For the second time in just over six months the court found that a Nigerian national convicted of drug-related crimes could not prevent deportation by relying on his relationship with his...
On 1 March the Court of Appeal looked at Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights in the context of a Tier 1 (Entrepreneur) appeal. Although the appeal was dismissed, the court confirmed that running a business may amount to private life for the purposes of Article 8. The...
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 section...
New research shows that the immigration insecurity of one family member now affects whole families, including children and citizens who are not themselves subject to immigration control, writes Dr Melanie Griffiths of the University of Bristol. This week, the University of Bristol published three policy briefings arising from new research examining...
Last month the Court of Appeal considered the rules governing deportation of foreign criminals. The case is Secretary of State for the Home Department v SC (Jamaica) [2017] EWCA Civ 2112, which concerned a Jamaican national originally granted asylum as a dependant of his mother in 2003. The court considers three...
The legal arguments on family life between adult children and parents are notoriously tricky. The guise in which the issue arose in Pun & Anr (Nepal) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2017] EWCA Civ 2106 was whether non-dependent adult children could qualify under the Gurkha policy. The court...
The High Court has issued a helpful reminder to the Secretary of State that basic rules of procedural fairness continue to apply, even in the thorny context of removal windows and detention. In R (AT & Ors) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2017] EWHC 2714 (Admin), HHJ Walden-Smith...
R (Mudibo) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2017] EWCA Civ 1949 is yet another decision of the Court of Appeal grappling with the provisions of those familiar nemeses, section 117B and the “insurmountable obstacles” test in EX.1 of Appendix FM. Much of the judgment is unremarkable with the usual mentioning...
In Secretary of State for the Home Department v AM (Jamaica) [2017] EWCA Civ 1782 the Court of Appeal found that a First-tier Tribunal decision to allow a Jamaican man’s deportation appeal under Article 8 contained a material error of law and set it aside. In criminal deportation appeals, the court found,...
Daniel Negassi v the United Kingdom (application no. 64337/14) was an appeal to the European Court of Human Rights with a complaint that the Home Office’s failure to grant Mr Negassi permission to work, while waiting for a decision on his asylum claim, was a breach of his right to...
Since July 2012 the immigration rules for adult dependent relatives have been, in practice, almost impossible to meet. Applicants need to demonstrate that they require a level of long-term personal care that they are unable to get in their home country, either due to cost or availability. This makes it...
Ndidi v the United Kingdom (Application no. 41215/14) had the beginnings of a tabloid splash. A Nigerian national convicted of drug dealing, who had lived in the UK since the age of two, sought to block his deportation by recourse to foreign judges. The European Court of Human Rights disappointed would-be...
In Secretary of State for the Home Department v KE (Nigeria) [2017] EWCA Civ 382, the Court of Appeal tackled the narrow, but important, issue as to whether a non-British citizen who is convicted and sentenced to a hospital order with restrictions under sections 37 and 41 of the Mental Health Act 1983 is “a foreign criminal...
Practitioners commonly rely on the “integration test” in the Immigration Rules to resist an individual’s removal on human rights grounds. The current rules can in some circumstances require a consideration of whether there would be “very significant obstacles” to an individual’s re-integration in that country if they were to be...
On 20 July 2017 the Home Office published changes to the Immigration Rules intended to give effect to findings made by the Supreme Court in MM (Lebanon) & Others v Secretary for the Home Department [2017] UKSC 10 on the Minimum Income Requirement. The new rules come into effect on...
