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 ...

It appears that we may start seeing changes in overseas visa processing centres soon, after TLScontact was unsuccessful in an attempt to stop the Home Office from entering into a new contract with VFS Global. The case is Teleperformance Contact Ltd v ...

Making a mistake on an immigration application form can be disastrous. If the mistake is interpreted by officials as an attempt to mislead or deceive, the application may be refused. If the application was for entry clearance, it can also lead to a te ...

The Home Office has published guidance on fee waivers for entry clearance applications (in other words, when it is possible to get a visa for free). This is important as the fees are set at a level that is prohibitive for many families. The waiver app ...

As a result of the almost aggressively complex way our immigration system works, not just in law but procedure as well, Ukrainians applying under the Ukraine Family Scheme or Homes for Ukraine may appear to be granted less time in the UK than they wer ...

In another blow for the Home Office on visa application fees, the department has been forced to concede that its policy on fee waivers for entry clearance applications is unlawful.  Fee waiver policies At time of writing, the relevant guidance states ...

Sometimes a migrant here in the UK unlawfully will want to apply for immigration status. Lawyers and the Home Office often call this “regularising” their status, because the person becomes a “regular” migrant within the rules r ...

Earlier this week, the Guardian published the story of Amber Murrey, a US academic who got a job at Oxford as an associate geography professor, but whose two daughters, aged 4 and 9, were refused visas to join her in the UK. The story explains that Ms ...

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 countr ...

Improvements have been made to the quality of decisions and to record-keeping in the Home Office’s Visa Section in Jordan. However, the decision makers regularly failed to take supporting evidence adequately into account, and, in a fifth of ca ...

The issue of when the Upper Tribunal might make a mandatory order requiring the Home Office to act in a specific way was considered in the case of R (on the application of Sultana) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (mandatory order – bas ...

Where an immigration official alleges that a document used in an application is false or forged, a ‘Document Verification Report’ (DVR) is routinely prepared. This report states the reasons why immigration officials believe the document is ...

An application for entry clearance is made on the date on which payment of the relevant fee is made. ...

F (Para 320(8); type of leave) USA [2013] UKUT 00309 (IAC) New reported immigration tribunal case on paragraph 320(18) of the immigration rules, one of the discretionary general grounds for refusal. The Entry Clearance Officer had failed to exercise d ...

As of today the full right of appeal against refusal of a visit visa sponsored by a family member in the UK has been abolished. Combined with the recently announced pilot of £3,000 ‘bonds’ payable for visitors to the UK, it is clear the G ...

Last week, Free Movement posted the fruits of a FoI request disclosing the statistics in relation to partner applications from pre- and post-July 2012.  These figures were then analysed and fair conclusions were drawn in relation to gender discrimina ...

Last month saw the advent of a very useful decision from the High Court concerning the lack of provision in the Immigration Rules to allow migrants in the Points-Based System to switch whilst in-country into a PBS dependent category: Zhang, R (on the ...

Just a quick note to flag something up that emerged from the forum a couple of weeks ago. A friend of the blog was kind enough to share a mine of policy documents obtained by Freedom of Information request and, not only that, but the friend also OCR ( ...

The Chief Inspector of the UK Border Agency, John Vine, has published a global review of entry clearance decision making. The findings are strongly critical in important respects. The sample size was nearly 1,500 case files from every entry clearance ...

The case of R (on the Application of Atapattu) v The Secretary of State for the Home Department [2011] EWHC 1388 (Admin) (27 May 2011) is an important case that I was just too busy to write up at the time but to which a return is worthwhile. It con ...