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 registration system,...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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...
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 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...
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. In...
This article is about the High Court and Court of Appeal decisions in the leading (and so far only) case on segregation in immigration detention. They are R (Muasa) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2017] EWHC 2267 (Admin) and R (TM (Kenya)) v Secretary of State for...
The European Court of Human Rights has developed Article 5 ECHR beyond domestic law and potentially created a dramatic increase in the amount of damages payable for unlawful detention caused by a breach of detention policy. VM v United Kingdom (No. 2) (application no. 62824/16) is only a decision of...
One of the requirements for Tier 1 (Entrepreneur) migrants extending their visas in the UK is to show they have invested £200,000 that they previously showed was available for investment in their initial applications. The important case of R (Sajjad) v SSHD [2019] EWCA Civ 720 is about the ways...
When someone pursuing an appeal in the immigration tribunal decides that they no longer want the appeal to go ahead, who gets to decide when the appeal comes to an end? The person themselves, the tribunal, or the Home Office? In July 2017, Mr Justice McCloskey, President of the Upper...
The Court of Appeal has handed down a blockbuster judgment on the highly controversial use of paragraph 322(5) of the Immigration Rules to refuse settlement to migrants over alleged tax discrepancies. It says that the Home Office’s stance in these cases is “legally flawed” and needs a major overhaul to...
The Upper Tribunal has handed down two cases with guidance on a range of issues relating to the automatic deportation regime. In both cases the appellants sought to rely on statements from the Supreme Court in KO (Nigeria) and Others v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] UKSC 53,...
The immigration tribunal has, once again, grappled with the public interest considerations which must be taken into account in all private and family life appeals against a migrant’s removal from the UK. It is now clear that, even where a child’s departure from the UK is unlikely to take place,...
The Upper Tribunal has referred an immigration adviser to the Office of the Immigration Services Commissioner (OISC), accusing him of running judicial review cases without a licence and failing to properly check expert reports. The case is R (Hoxha & Ors) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (representatives:...
An adult primary carer of an British citizen can acquire a derivative right to reside under EU law, the Court of Appeal has said in MS (Malaysia) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWCA Civ 580. On the facts, it is surprising that the Secretary of State...
The Court of Appeal has reiterated that a migrant can be regarded as a “persistent offender” for the purposes of deportation law even if he or she has not committed a crime for some time. The case is Binbuga (Turkey) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWCA...
R (SRI Lalithambika Foods Ltd) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWHC 761 (Admin) contains a practical tip to help rescue a sponsor licence from suspension or revocation. Charles Bourne QC, sitting as a deputy High Court judge, explains that receipt of a suspension letter presents a...
Assiduous Free Movement readers and European law aficionados may remember the case of SM (Algeria) v Entry Clearance Officer [2018] UKSC 9, covered in this previous post. The case has now gone from the Supreme Court to the Court of Justice of the European Union, which has held that although a...
The Court of Justice of the European Union has today handed down judgment in the case of C-163/17 Jawo. The court held that asylum seekers cannot be sent back even to a fellow EU member state if they are at substantial risk of inhuman or degrading treatment, but set the...
In a unanimous decision the Court of Appeal have allowed the appeal of an Ahmadi who was unable to demonstrate that his case fell within the relevant country guidance decision of MN and others (Ahmadis- country conditions- risk) Pakistan CG [2012] UKUT 389 (IAC). The case is WA (Pakistan) v...
The Court of Appeal has ruled that the regulations on the detention of asylum seekers subject to the Dublin III removal procedure comply with EU law. Background: detaining migrants before return to another EU country The International Protection (Detention) (Significant Risk of Absconding Criteria) Regulations 2017 (SI 2017 No. 405) were...
The Supreme Court has had to remind the immigration tribunal that self inflicted torture by proxy (SIBP) is inherently unlikely. Self inflicted torture by proxy is the least worst phrase so far devised for describing the idea — and it really is just an idea, a figment of someone’s fevered...
In R (Majewski) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWHC 473 (Admin) the High Court has concluded that EU citizens who were unlawfully detained solely because they were homeless should be paid damages at the normal rate. In the important Gureckis judgment of December 2017, the High Court had ruled that...
The President of the Upper Tribunal’s decision in OA and others (human rights; ‘new matter’; s.120) Nigeria [2019] UKUT 65 (IAC) has added another layer of complexity to an already biased and convoluted system. Readers are probably au fait with when the Secretary of State’s consent is required for an...
Today the High Court found in the case of R (Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWHC 452 (Admin) that the government’s Right to Rent scheme causes racial discrimination in breach of the European Convention on Human Rights. The Joint Council for the...
I acted for the appellant in the extraordinary case of Guled v SSHD [2019] EWCA Civ 92, in which the Court of Appeal ruled on the legal status of a deportation order made in 2002. 2002: deportation order made Even by immigration standards, Mr G had a complex case. We...
The High Court has called in the Solicitors Regulation Authority and the Director of Public Prosecutions over the conduct of a shambolic citizenship case. The judgment is Jetly & Anor v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWHC 204 (Admin). The circumstances of the case are baffling even when laid...
The upshot of the Upper Tribunal’s decision in AK and IK (S.85 NIAA 2002 – new matters) Turkey [2019] UKUT 67 (IAC) is that a person who relies upon a different category of the Immigration Rules to succeed under Article 8 at their appeal or in a section 120 statement,...
The Upper Tribunal has held that the non-EU partner of an EU citizen cannot start accruing time towards permanent residence status until they have a residence card, pointing out the well established distinction between family members and extended family members in EU free movement law. In short: a person married...
In Mohammad Racheed v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] CSIH 8, the Inner House of the Court of Session held that a judicial review challenge to the certification of a human rights claim to remain in the UK as “clearly unfounded” can include new evidence. Mr Racheed,...
In a newly reported judgment the Upper Tribunal has quashed the Secretary of State’s decision to refuse a request from the Greek government to take charge of the asylum claims of a mother and her three children so they could reunite with the father, who lives in the UK. The...
Bhandari & Anor v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWCA Civ 129 considered some fairly elderly Upper Tribunal case law on fairness and the Points Based System, and in particular a decision of Mr Justice Blake in Patel (Revocation of Sponsor Licence: Fairness: India) [2011] UKUT 211 (IAC). Unfortunately...
