The Court of Appeal has re-affirmed that the domestic violence provisions in the immigration rules are restricted to certain categories of partners and is not
The adult dependent relative rules have been buried in Appendix FM since their inception on 9 July 2012. From 1 June 2023, they have been
Yesterday’s Spring Budget 2023 announced upcoming changes to the business visitor visa requirements and the addition of construction workers to the Shortage Occupation List. Additional
The UK continues to play host to industrial action with the latest strike action announced this week being opted for by Junior Doctors and currently
It is common for immigration lawyers to advise clients in the UK that travelling outside the Common Travel Area (CTA) when an immigration application is
Let’s say you made a normal application for settlement on the UK Ancestry route five months ago and you are still waiting for a decision.
The minimum income requirement for a spouse or partner visa is well known. Broadly speaking, applicants must show that their sponsor has a gross annual income
The new Statement of Changes, published on 18 October 2022, has introduced yet another appendix to the Immigration Rules: Appendix Temporary Permission to Stay for
Appendix EU and Appendix EU (Family Permit) have both received some updates in the latest Statement of Changes to the Immigration Rules. The accompanying explanatory
The Ukraine Extension Scheme is one of the three visa schemes set up for people displaced by the Russian invasion of Ukraine (alongside the Homes
The Home Office has published a new statement of changes to the Immigration Rules (HC 719). The explanatory memorandum confirms that the changes are largely
With the government’s controversial mini-budget causing economic turmoil, Liz Truss has been steadfast that her aim is to boost economic growth in the United Kingdom.
A ticked off Court of Appeal has refused another long residence appeal based on gaps in lawful residence, in a judgment full of digs at
The Home Office has published a new statement of changes to the Immigration Rules (HC 17). It is largely focused on changes to the asylum
In Bikanu (s.11 TCEA; s.117C NIAA; para. 399D) [2021] UKUT 34 (IAC), the Upper Tribunal has confirmed that paragraph 399D of the Immigration Rules has
The new Points Based Immigration System — replacing the old Points Based System that was introduced in 2008 — went live yesterday. The government is
The long-awaited statement of changes giving us more details on the famous “new Points-Based Immigration System” has now been published. It is over 500 pages
Is a statement of changes even a statement of changes nowadays if it doesn’t introduce a new appendix to the Immigration Rules? On 10 September
If you can say one thing about the Home Office, it’s that they have questionable priorities! In the middle of a pandemic, with thousands of
The Home Office has accepted the need to simplify the “complex and confusing” Immigration Rules and says that the work is already underway. In an
The government continues to keep us immigration lawyers on our toes, and everyone else completely flummoxed, with yet another statement of changes to the Immigration
The first of no doubt countless statements of changes of 2020 was published yesterday, 30 January 2020. The main purpose of this set of changes
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
The Law Commission’s long-awaited report on Simplification of the Immigration Rules says that rewriting and paring down the “overly complex and unworkable” document would improve legal
Another statement of changes to the Immigration Rules (HC 170) was laid on 24 October 2019. The changes relate to Appendix EU of the Rules
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,
Yesterday afternoon the government dropped statement of changes to the Immigration Rules HC 2631. This is a formal change to the Immigration Rules and there
A new statement of changes to the Immigration Rules was published today, 7 March 2019. It is 294 pages long and covers a lot of ground.
The Immigration Rules should be redrafted and restructured in order to cut down on complexity, the Law Commission says. Launching a consultation on Simplifying the Immigration
A statement of changes to the Immigration Rules was published today, 11 December 2018. The main changes are to introduce the pilot scheme for short-term
We expected a full statement of changes to the Immigration Rules to be laid before Parliament yesterday but instead we got a statement about the
A v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2016] CSIH 38 is an important 2016 decision from the Court of Session in Scotland, the full impact
A new statement of changes to the Immigration Rules was laid on 10 October 2018. There is some very welcome news, including more flexibility given to
R (Singh) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWCA Civ 1669 is about how the transitional provisions in the Immigration Rules apply
As regular readers of this blog will be aware, the Home Office’s latest statement of changes to the Immigration Rules comes into force tomorrow (Friday
The case of TY (Overseas Adoptions – Certificates of Eligibility) Jamaica [2018] UKUT 197 (IAC) involves the complex interplay between the Immigration Rules and international
In the case of R (Nesiama & Ors) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWCA Civ 1369, the Court of Appeal found
On Friday 15 June, a new statement of changes was laid. Rather atypically, many of the changes are welcome news! All changes will come into
A Church of England bishop accused of committing crimes against humanity during the Rwandan genocide has won an appeal by the Home Office challenging his
In October 2011 the Home Office amended the Immigration Rules to allow immigration applications to be refused where the NHS had notified the Secretary of State
The Court of Appeal has re-affirmed that the domestic violence provisions in the immigration rules are restricted to certain categories of partners and is not open to partners of Points Based System dependants, even if they have in fact suffered domestic abuse. The case is SWP v Secretary of State...
The adult dependent relative rules have been buried in Appendix FM since their inception on 9 July 2012. From 1 June 2023, they have been transposed into their own standalone Appendix Adult Dependent Relative. The new appendix was announced in the 9 March 2023 Statement of Changes to the Immigration...
Yesterday’s Spring Budget 2023 announced upcoming changes to the business visitor visa requirements and the addition of construction workers to the Shortage Occupation List. Additional language support for Ukraine Visa Scheme holders was also announced. Business visitor visa The changes expected in autumn 2023 will include expanding the range of...
The UK continues to play host to industrial action with the latest strike action announced this week being opted for by Junior Doctors and currently set for March 2023. For many, negotiated settlements continue to be some way off and further strikes are anticipated in the coming months. UK visa...
It is common for immigration lawyers to advise clients in the UK that travelling outside the Common Travel Area (CTA) when an immigration application is pending will result in the application being treated as withdrawn (cue fiddly explanations to clients as to what constitutes the CTA). It is also common...
Let’s say you made a normal application for settlement on the UK Ancestry route five months ago and you are still waiting for a decision. You receive word that a family member abroad is sick and you need to travel home urgently. There’s no option for retroactively upgrading the outstanding...
The minimum income requirement for a spouse or partner visa is well known. Broadly speaking, applicants must show that their sponsor has a gross annual income of at least £18,600. Alternatively, they can rely on savings or, if they are already in the UK and working legally, on their income....
The new Statement of Changes, published on 18 October 2022, has introduced yet another appendix to the Immigration Rules: Appendix Temporary Permission to Stay for Victims of Human Trafficking or Slavery. The new appendix will be added on 30 January 2023. The provisions largely mirror those set out in primary...
Appendix EU and Appendix EU (Family Permit) have both received some updates in the latest Statement of Changes to the Immigration Rules. The accompanying explanatory statement gives an overview of the changes that have been made. The changes come into force on 9 November 2022. A few of the definitions...
The Ukraine Extension Scheme is one of the three visa schemes set up for people displaced by the Russian invasion of Ukraine (alongside the Homes for Ukraine and Ukraine Family Schemes). All three Ukraine Visa Schemes result in a grant of three years of limited leave to remain with the...
The Home Office has published a new statement of changes to the Immigration Rules (HC 719). The explanatory memorandum confirms that the changes are largely focused on the government’s continued efforts to simplify the rules, and on implementing policy changes that have recently been put in place. The majority of...
With the government’s controversial mini-budget causing economic turmoil, Liz Truss has been steadfast that her aim is to boost economic growth in the United Kingdom. Central to achieving this will be a series of key reforms to the work-based immigration system. The government logic may be that the international talent...
A ticked off Court of Appeal has refused another long residence appeal based on gaps in lawful residence, in a judgment full of digs at the Home Office in Iyieke v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2022] EWCA Civ 1147. The court made no bones about the fact...
The Home Office has published a new statement of changes to the Immigration Rules (HC 17). It is largely focused on changes to the asylum system following the passage of the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 and the agreement with Rwanda to export refugees to that country. The changes come...
In Bikanu (s.11 TCEA; s.117C NIAA; para. 399D) [2021] UKUT 34 (IAC), the Upper Tribunal has confirmed that paragraph 399D of the Immigration Rules has no relevance to the human rights exceptions to deportation set out in section 117C(4)-(6) of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002. President Lane and...
The new Points Based Immigration System — replacing the old Points Based System that was introduced in 2008 — went live yesterday. The government is hailing it as a “simple, effective and flexible system”, although there are early reports of teething troubles and the feeling of most immigration practitioners is...
The long-awaited statement of changes giving us more details on the famous “new Points-Based Immigration System” has now been published. It is over 500 pages long and even the explanatory memorandum, which is usually just a few pages long, weighs in at 50 pages. This article is a summary of...
Is a statement of changes even a statement of changes nowadays if it doesn’t introduce a new appendix to the Immigration Rules? On 10 September 2020, the government laid the first statement of changes of its infamous “new Point-Based Immigration System”. It includes the addition of five new appendices. The...
If you can say one thing about the Home Office, it’s that they have questionable priorities! In the middle of a pandemic, with thousands of migrants not knowing whether or not they will have to leave the UK in just over two weeks, the department has decided to publish a...
The Home Office has accepted the need to simplify the “complex and confusing” Immigration Rules and says that the work is already underway. In an official response to the Law Commission’s recent report on the subject, the department says that “we have already begun the process of reviewing, simplifying and...
The government continues to keep us immigration lawyers on our toes, and everyone else completely flummoxed, with yet another statement of changes to the Immigration Rules. Thankfully, many of these changes are welcome as they plug gaps in the EU Settlement Scheme. But it is difficult to keep up with...
The first of no doubt countless statements of changes of 2020 was published yesterday, 30 January 2020. The main purpose of this set of changes to the Immigration Rules is to introduce the new Global Talent category, announced by the government earlier this week. The changes will take effect on 20...
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...
The Law Commission’s long-awaited report on Simplification of the Immigration Rules says that rewriting and paring down the “overly complex and unworkable” document would improve legal certainty and transparency for applicants as well as save money for the courts and the Home Office. The Immigration Rules are the document that...
Another statement of changes to the Immigration Rules (HC 170) was laid on 24 October 2019. The changes relate to Appendix EU of the Rules and their functioning in a no-deal Brexit scenario. This is somewhat surprising given recent events. Jacob Rees-Mogg said in Parliament on the same date that...
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 Murrey’s husband lives...
Yesterday afternoon the government dropped statement of changes to the Immigration Rules HC 2631. This is a formal change to the Immigration Rules and there is a lot to it: the full version weighs in at 102 pages. We’ll deal with other changes in another post (or posts) but here...
A new statement of changes to the Immigration Rules was published today, 7 March 2019. It is 294 pages long and covers a lot of ground. The main changes are to Tier 1 entrepreneur and investment visas, and to the EU Settlement Scheme. This requires, inevitably, a new appendix to the...
The Immigration Rules should be redrafted and restructured in order to cut down on complexity, the Law Commission says. Launching a consultation on Simplifying the Immigration Rules today, the influential law reform body proposes major revisions to “provide a more logical structure, remove unnecessary repetitions and improve the drafting”. The regulations...
A statement of changes to the Immigration Rules was published today, 11 December 2018. The main changes are to introduce the pilot scheme for short-term agricultural workers that was announced earlier this year, and to expand the domestic violence settlement scheme to cover refugees. The more fundamental changes to Tier...
We expected a full statement of changes to the Immigration Rules to be laid before Parliament yesterday but instead we got a statement about the statement. The immigration minister, Caroline Nokes, gave us a sneak preview of a range of tweaks to the rules that will be laid “shortly”. The...
A v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2016] CSIH 38 is an important 2016 decision from the Court of Session in Scotland, the full impact of which has still to be felt. It concerns the Immigration Rules, as they apply to spouses of refugees, where the spouse has...
A new statement of changes to the Immigration Rules was laid on 10 October 2018. There is some very welcome news, including more flexibility given to caseworkers on whether and when they can write to applicants to ask for missing documents. (Whether they will in practice or still refuse for...
R (Singh) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWCA Civ 1669 is about how the transitional provisions in the Immigration Rules apply to online applications which must be supported with further evidence sent later by post. The appellant argued that an application made online without supporting evidence...
As regular readers of this blog will be aware, the Home Office’s latest statement of changes to the Immigration Rules comes into force tomorrow (Friday 6 July 2018). Nath has summarised the various changes being introduced in a previous post. Although a relatively small part of a fairly lengthy statement...
The case of TY (Overseas Adoptions – Certificates of Eligibility) Jamaica [2018] UKUT 197 (IAC) involves the complex interplay between the Immigration Rules and international adoption law. It is a must-read for anyone involved in applications or appeals in this area. The case is also authority for the proposition that...
In the case of R (Nesiama & Ors) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWCA Civ 1369, the Court of Appeal found that “residence” in the UK means “physical presence”, such that continuous residence in an application for indefinite leave to remain may be broken by too...
On Friday 15 June, a new statement of changes was laid. Rather atypically, many of the changes are welcome news! All changes will come into force on 6 July 2018, although some only apply to applications made after that date. As always, practitioners are encouraged to read the new rules...
A Church of England bishop accused of committing crimes against humanity during the Rwandan genocide has won an appeal by the Home Office challenging his right to settle in the UK. The case is Secretary of State for the Home Department v Ruhumuliza [2018] EWCA Civ 1178. The legal points...
In October 2011 the Home Office amended the Immigration Rules to allow immigration applications to be refused where the NHS had notified the Secretary of State of an outstanding debt of £1,000 or more. In early 2017, this figure was reduced to £500, hot on the heels of the Immigration...
