All Articles: Court of Appeal

The Court of Appeal’s judgment in Hussein v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2020] EWCA Civ 156 is another reminder of the multiple layers of protection from deportation which EU citizens enjoy. In particular, it focuses on the importance of a properly reasoned decision by the First-tier Tribunal...

18th February 2020
BY Bilaal Shabbir

The Court of Appeal in ZA (Pakistan) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2020] EWCA Civ 146 has made a plea to lawyers to transfer their wrongful detention claims to the Queen’s Bench Division or County Court once the detention issue has been resolved. ZA’s case started life...

17th February 2020
BY Larry Lock

The Court of Appeal has confirmed that in order to benefit from the Surinder Singh principle, the family involved must have genuinely resided in another EU country and have created or fortified their family life there. In Kaur & Ors v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2020] EWCA...

13th February 2020
BY Alex Schymyck

In recent years the Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) has displayed a willingness to allow late appeals and quash historic convictions to address injustice against victims of human trafficking. This includes using the common law to protect the rights of trafficking victims convicted of immigration offences before the statutory defence...

10th February 2020
BY Alex Schymyck

The Court of Appeal has given judgment in R (AC (Algeria)) v SSHD [2020] EWCA Civ 36. The case is about “grace periods” in unlawful detention claims. A grace period, as described by Lord Justice Irwin in his judgment, is that period of time allowed to the Secretary of State,...

28th January 2020
BY Mike Poulter

Prior to the closure of the Tier 1 (Entrepreneur) route, the main requirement was evidence that an applicant had access to funds for investment in their proposed venture. The Immigration Rules permitted applicants to rely on their own funds, or alternatively on funds that have recently been transferred to them...

20th January 2020
BY Nick Nason

The Court of Appeal has given judgment in Akinyemi v SSHD (No 2) [2019] EWCA Civ 2098, a long-running appeal concerning the deportation of a man who was born in the UK in 1983, and has never left. In reversing (again) the decision of the Upper Tribunal to dismiss Mr...

12th December 2019
BY Nick Nason

For those lawyers, like my Lord and myself, who have spent many years practising in the family jurisdiction, this is not a comfortable interpretation to apply. But that is what Parliament has decided… So held Lord Justice Baker, giving judgment in SSHD v KF (Nigeria) [2019] EWCA Civ 2051, and...

5th December 2019
BY Nick Nason

The Court of Appeal has given judgment in CI (Nigeria) v SSHD [2019] EWCA Civ 2027, providing further guidance on the law relating to the deportation of foreign criminals, and in particular on the meaning in section 117C(4) of the Nationality Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 of “lawful residence”, “social...

27th November 2019
BY Nick Nason

In Idahosa v R [2019] EWCA Crim 1953 the Court of Appeal has ruled that an asylum seeker who had stopped over in the United Kingdom for 54 days en route to Canada can rely on the exception to false documents offences available to refugees. The court took a purposive...

20th November 2019
BY Alex Schymyck

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...

13th November 2019
BY Bilaal Shabbir

The Court of Appeal has overruled both immigration tribunals and found that members of the Tamil Tigers who were detained but escaped are at risk of persecution in Sri Lanka. The judgment in RS (Sri Lanka) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWCA Civ 1796 betrays the...

1st November 2019
BY Alex Schymyck

Just when you thought the rule excluding chefs at take-away restaurants from the Tier 2 Shortage Occupation List had been tested to destruction, there arrives yet another valiant attempt to navigate this uber-niche corner of a corner of the Immigration Rules in R (Imam) v Secretary of State for the...

28th October 2019
BY Nick Nason

Last year, the Upper Tribunal refused to recognise my client PK as a refugee, despite acknowledging the risk of a Ukrainian conscript being associated with organisations committing acts contrary to international humanitarian law. This resulted in the dismissal of numerous other appeals of the same nature after the Secretary of...

25th October 2019
BY Ruslan Kosarenko

Someone sentenced to more than four years’ imprisonment is in the most serious category of offender for the purposes of deportation law, no matter how long ago that sentence was, the Court of Appeal has confirmed. The case is OH (Algeria) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019]...

24th October 2019
BY CJ McKinney

A grant of refugee status usually involves acceptance that a particular set of circumstances exist which would make it unlawful for a person to be returned to their country of origin. But circumstances change, and this can have a knock-on effect on whether someone continues to qualify as a refugee....

17th October 2019
BY Bilaal Shabbir

The Court of Appeal has held that the UN Refugee Convention should not be interpreted to include an implied type of derivative refugee status for the family members of refugees. As a result, anyone who was granted refugee status under UK law as the family member of a recognised refugee...

16th October 2019
BY Alex Schymyck

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...

8th October 2019
BY Iain Halliday

The Court of Appeal has held that the UK government can be asked to pay expenses where a judicial review has been brought against the Upper Tribunal’s refusal to grant permission to appeal. The test case of Faqiri v Upper Tribunal (Immigration and Asylum Chamber) [2019] EWCA Civ 151 has...

22nd August 2019
BY Bilaal Shabbir

O v R [2019] EWCA Crim 1389 is the latest of a series of appeals brought by victims of trafficking against historic convictions. In this case the Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) decided to quash a 2008 conviction because the prosecution had not even considered whether bringing O to court...

14th August 2019
BY Alex Schymyck

The ground of appeal in Hameed v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWCA Civ 1324 was: It was wrong to find the appellant had made a false representation under paragraph 322(1A) of the Immigration Rules when he had not acted dishonestly. Mr Hameed had applied for a...

6th August 2019
BY CJ McKinney

Always a worry (but never a surprise) when Court of Appeal judges start off a judgment by saying that the case “has a tortuous procedural history”, is “highly technical” and involves “Byzantine… provisions” of immigration law. Firdaws v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWCA Civ 1310 is...

31st July 2019
BY Bilaal Shabbir

In Secretary of State for the Home Department v MS (Somalia) [2019] EWCA Civ 1345, the Court of Appeal has held that the Home Office can cease refugee status where there has been a change of circumstances in the refugee’s country of origin such that it is possible for them...

30th July 2019
BY Alex Schymyck

If a foreign criminal wins their deportation appeal, can the Home Office try and deport them again, even where there has been no further offending? In MA (Pakistan) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWCA Civ 1252, the Court of Appeal considered this question and held that...

24th July 2019
BY Nick Nason

The First-tier and Upper Tribunals seem to have gone rather badly wrong in the case of MAB (Iraq) v The Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWCA Civ 1253, involving an Iraqi doctor who was formerly employed to care for prisoners by Iraqi military intelligence. The Court of...

22nd July 2019
BY Colin Yeo

In the case of Secretary of State for the Home Department v PG (Jamaica) [2019] EWCA Civ 1213 the Court of Appeal considered the meaning of “unduly harsh” in deportation cases, overturning the decisions of both of the tribunals that had previously heard the appeal. In this post we look...

17th July 2019
BY Nick Nason

The Court of Appeal has taken a restrictive approach to the admission of new evidence before the Upper Tribunal that was not available before the First-tier Tribunal. The case is Kabir v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWCA Civ 1162. In Kabir, the First-tier Tribunal had refused...

16th July 2019
BY Alex Schymyck

The Home Office cannot detain an EU citizen pending deportation without first considering whether detention is “proportionate and necessary” under EU law, the Court of Appeal has said in R (Lauzikas) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWCA Civ 1168. Any decision to detain cannot be based...

15th July 2019
BY Larry Lock

The deportation case of a Nigerian man with sickle cell disease, resident in the UK for almost three decades, has been bouncing around the UK court system for over six years. It appears the case has finally been settled by the Court of Appeal – on its second visit –...

9th July 2019
BY Nick Nason

In the recent Court of Appeal case of UT (Sri Lanka) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWCA Civ 1095, Lord Justice Coulson has dealt with some important issues relating to practice and procedure in the tribunal system. UT is a Sri Lankan who came to the...

8th July 2019
BY Christopher Cole

Migrants who have spent ten years in the UK with continuous and lawful leave can apply for indefinite leave to remain (ILR). Can leave be “continuous” if it involved short gaps between lawful periods of leave where an applicant has overstayed? This was the question addressed by the Court of...

27th June 2019
BY Nick Nason

Detention in a young offender institution has much the same impact on an EU citizen’s enhanced protection against deportation as imprisonment in an adult jail, the Court of Appeal has held. The case is Secretary of State for the Home Department v Viscu [2019] EWCA Civ 1052. EU deportation law...

26th June 2019
BY CJ McKinney

Where a company sponsors a worker from overseas to fill a vacancy in the UK they must only do so if that vacancy is “genuine”. The case of R (Suny) v SSHD [2019] EWCA Civ 1019 arose from a disagreement between a sponsored worker and the Home Office about the...

25th June 2019
BY Nick Nason

This week the Court of Appeal quashed the certification of an Albanian asylum claim as “clearly unfounded”. In SP (Albania) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWCA Civ 951, the court found that the Home Office had not properly investigated the appellant’s account of being persecuted before...

21st June 2019
BY Larry Lock

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...

17th June 2019
BY Iain Halliday

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...

13th June 2019
BY David Neale

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...

12th June 2019
BY Alex Schymyck

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...

28th May 2019
BY CJ McKinney

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...

24th May 2019
BY Bilaal Shabbir

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....

14th May 2019
BY Colin Yeo
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