The case of AB, R (On the Application Of) v The Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWCA Civ 383 has unusual facts, but an unsurprising conclusion: the Home Office cannot grant asylum to someone who is not in the UK. The background is not really important but undoubtedly...
In JM (Zimbabwe), R (on the application of) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWCA Civ 188 the Court of Appeal grappled with an interesting point on the proper interpretation of paragraph 403(c) of the Immigration Rules. Paragraph 403 deals with the grant of leave to stateless people....
The web of Rules and Guidance has become so tangled that even the spider has difficulty controlling it. So says Lord Justice Underhill in Mudiyanselage v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWCA Civ 65, the latest decision in a long lineage examining the much maligned Points Based...
Countries are being declared safe for refugees to return to, but only if they have criminal records, a new report by the government’s immigration inspector suggests. The Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration, David Bolt, found that the Home Office unit that investigates migrants with criminal records is routinely...
One of the fundamental principles of the rule of law is that the law “must be accessible and so far as possible intelligible, clear and predictable” (Tom Bingham, The Rule of Law, 2010). The reasons for this should be self evident. Just as it is impossible to play a sport fairly...
The Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, has announced that the Law Commission will conduct a review of the Immigration Rules. The review came to light in Rudd’s oral evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee on 17 October but Law Commission staff had already begun meetings before then, including with me....
Practitioners commonly rely on the “integration test” in the Immigration Rules to resist an individual’s removal on human rights grounds. The current rules can in some circumstances require a consideration of whether there would be “very significant obstacles” to an individual’s re-integration in that country if they were to be...
On 20 July 2017 the Home Office published changes to the Immigration Rules intended to give effect to findings made by the Supreme Court in MM (Lebanon) & Others v Secretary for the Home Department [2017] UKSC 10 on the Minimum Income Requirement. The new rules come into effect on...
A new set of requirements for overstayers who apply for leave to enter or remain in the UK was introduced late last year. In short, the 28 day grace period for overstayers was abolished and replaced with a very limited 14 day limit, but only where a “good reason” was also...
The Supreme Court has given judgment in the case of Mirza v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2016] UKSC 63. The case concerned the effect of section 3C of the Immigration Act 1971 as amended and whether it extends leave where an applicant for leave is found later...
Statement of Changes to the Immigration Rules HC667 was laid yesterday, 3 November 2016. The document weighs in at 90 pages but many of the changes are to language rather than effect. The more significant changes are to Tier 2 skilled workers, for whom the minimum salary level is increased,...
Statement of Changes to the Immigration Rules HC 437 has been published. Most of the changes are fairly minor or technical but not all. From the explanatory notes: The purpose of these changes is to: implement section 53(1) of the Modern Slavery Act 2015 (“the 2015 Act”) which provides that the...
Statement of Changes in Immigration Rules HC 297 was published today, 13 July 2015, having been trailed in The Daily Mail over the weekend. It includes some significant changes, particularly for international students. I’m technically on holiday, so I’ve elected to do some heavy cutting and pasting from the ministerial announcement...
From the main Garden Court Chambers website regarding the case of Granovski & Ors v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2015] EWHC 1478 (Admin): The High Court today handed down judgment on a judicial review challenging the Secretary of State’s rigid approach to calculating ‘continuous residence’ for settlement purposes....
The Court of Appeal condemns the complexity of the Points Based System in the case of Hossain & Ors v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2015] EWCA Civ 207. Lord Justice Beatson says at paragraph 30: The detail, the number of documents that have to be consulted, the...
Where an application for leave to remain is made before 9 July 2012 but decided after that date, which Immigration Rules should apply to it? The answer, according to Court of Appeal in Singh v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2015] EWCA Civ 74, is the ‘old’ Rules,...
Now in version 12, valid from 17 October 2014. The only major change seems to be removal of guidance on qualifying for ILR after 10 years through the private life route. Still includes the useful exception to requiring continuity of residence for those who overstay for 28 days or less.
...This post is based on an earlier page I made available to Free Movement Members a couple of weeks ago, before Statement of Changes HC 532 took effect. The commencement date of 28 July 2014 has been and gone and we have also seen commencement of the overseas deportation appeals sections...
Omenma (Conditional discharge – not a conviction of an offence) [2014] UKUT 314 (IAC) is an interesting case for two reasons. Firstly, the Home Office accepted that the decision was wrong and withdrew it. Nevertheless, because the case had reached the Upper Tribunal, the withdrawal of decision did not automatically deprive...
Yesterday was the two year anniversary of the harsh new immigration rules introduced on 9 July 2012. Tomorrow comes the Court of Appeal decision in the challenge to the spouse minimum income threshold. The effects of these rules are really beginning to bite: much misery has been caused by family...
The Home Office has updated its statistics on the number of families with pending applications separated by the £18,600 minimum income threshold for spouses. At the end of December 2013 it was 3,014. At the end of March it stood at 3,641. That is a LOT of separated families and an almost unimaginable amount...
Having been overruled by the Court of Appeal in the case of Rodriguez [2014] EWCA Civ 2 (FM post here), Mr Justice McCloskey, President of the Immigration and Asylum Chamber of the Upper Tribunal, has returned to the vexed issue of ‘evidential flexibility’ in a trio of cases: Durrani (Entrepreneurs: bank...
In the fine case of Fetle (Partners: two year requirement) [2014] UKUT 00267 (IAC) the Upper Tribunal holds that the requirement in paragraph 352AA for partners of refugees seeking entry clearance for living together in a relationship akin to either a marriage or a civil partnership which has subsisted for two years or...
A new Statement of Changes to the Immigration Rules (HC 198) corrects an earlier botched attempt to change the rules by fiat and remove discredited Educational Testing Services (ETS) as providers of the English language test needed for many modern immigration applications. ETS was the subject of a BBC Panorama investigation which...
The first of these is a useful short case that came out while I was away called Shen (Paper appeals; proving dishonesty) [2014] UKUT 236 (IAC). It is another example of an applicant with a driving conviction who ticked the ‘no’ box to the question about previous convictions standard on all immigration...
This post has been contributed by, Vijay Jagadesham, who represented the College in Global Vision College Ltd v SSHD[2014] EWCA Civ 659. Readers would be forgiven for thinking that this question was clearly answered by the Supreme Court in the case of Alvi v SSHD [2012] 1 WLR 2208, and the subsequent...
When the Immigration Rules for families were changed in July 2012, it was the minimum income threshold that rightly attracted the most attention. It has caused huge misery and has divided many loving families, sometimes separating children from parents. It is particularly harsh because the income threshold is set so...
The Court of Appeal has in the case of Edgehill & Anor v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2014] EWCA Civ 402 settled the question of whether the new human rights rules introduced on 9 July 2012 apply to applications made before that date: they do not. Specifically,...
[WITH UPDATES] In the second Statement of Changes this month, a number of adjustments to the Immigration Rules have been announced by Minister James Brokenshire. You can also read some propaganda about how great the changes are for geeks here. Link to the actual Statement of Changes to follow when...
Around 3,000 couples in England and Wales will tie the knot tomorrow (Saturday 15 February). According to a Home Office guestimate between 48 and 123 of these marriages will be ‘sham’, which is to say they will not be ‘genuine and subsisting’ as required by UK Immigration Rules. But what does...
[UPDATE: blog post on how the hearing went here] The hearing of the test case challenge to the spouse minimum income rules is approaching and the team behind the challenge seek information about how decisions are being handled at the moment by Entry Clearance Officers on the ground. We would...
Newly introduced Immigration Rules (Statement of Changes HC 803) due to take effect on 1 December 2013 will end a concession for family members of members of the armed forces, forcing many such families to separate if the soldier is stationed to the UK. Ending the concession and bringing soldiers into line...
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 false. It is vital that an applicant suspected of deception can answer the charge,...
I’ve had quite a few queries asking for updates on the spouse minimum income case, MM & Ors v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2013] EWHC 1900 (Admin). The challenge to the rules essentially succeeded in the High Court but the Home Office have appealed to the Court of Appeal (blog...
Child abduction is a criminal offence. It requires covert departure from the UK to another country, and from the abductor’s point of view preferably one that is not in Europe, not a signatory to the Hague Convention and that does not have a bilateral agreement with the UK. The incredibly...
Theresa May spent over a year saying her new immigration rules would weaken Article 8 rights for “foreign criminals” but conceded the point within a day at the Court of Appeal. MF (Nigeria) v SSHD [2013] EWCA Civ 1192 makes clear that the Immigration Rules governing deportation now provide a ‘complete code’...
