All Articles: Entry clearance

Making 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 2023 By

TLScontact in unsuccessful challenge to new Home Office contract

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 ...

19th October 2023 By

General grounds for refusal: alleged deception, false information and innocent mistakes

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 ...

31st August 2023 By

Free family visas: the entry clearance fee waiver policy

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 ...

30th June 2022 By

How come my Ukraine Scheme visa doesn’t last three years as promised?

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 ...

29th March 2022 By

Policy on fee waivers for entry clearance is unlawful, government concedes

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 ...

8th March 2021 By

General grounds for refusal: contriving to frustrate the intention of the rules

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 ...

1st May 2020 By

Why can’t my children join me in the UK?

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 ...

4th October 2019 By

The immigration rules for adult dependent relatives: out with the old…

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 ...

8th November 2017 By

ICI Inspection on Amman Visa Section: improvements made but same old problems remain

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 ...

6th November 2015 By

Mandatory orders in immigration judicial review applications

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 ...

20th May 2015 By

Document Verification Reports are not secret materials

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 ...

5th November 2013 By

Kaur (Entry Clearance – date of application) [2013] UKUT 00381 (IAC)

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

12th August 2013 By

F (Para 320(8); type of leave) USA

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 ...

10th July 2013 By

Family visit appeals abolished and bonds introduced

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 ...

25th June 2013 By

Parliament Committee Report on New Family Rules and Westminster Debate

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 ...

20th June 2013 By

Chikwamba delivers again

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 ...

28th May 2013 By

Evidential flexibility applies in entry clearance cases

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 ( ...

5th April 2013 By

Entry clearance decision making: a global review

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 ...

20th December 2011 By

Unlawful retention of passport by ECO

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 ...

5th October 2011 By