All Articles: Immigration rules

UKBA have changed their removals policy, and not in a nice way. The announcement letter to stakeholders is available here and does not really tell half the story. In essence, the 72 hour notice period for removals is to be waived in a wide range of cases and no-notice removals will...

21st December 2009
BY Free Movement

In an unusually dramatic move, the Presenting Officer in the recent case of KB (para: 320(7A): “false representations”) Albania [2009] UKAIT 00043 served a section 40 notice on a witness in the case, thereby depriving him of his British citizenship. There is a right of appeal to the tribunal against...

15th October 2009
BY Free Movement

No time for a proper post on this new case from the tribunal, NA & Others (Tier 1 Post-Study Work-funds) [2009] UKAIT 00025, so I’ll just paste in the headnote, which speaks for itself: i. The new-style Immigration Rules governing Tier 1 (Post Study Work) contain a Maintenance (Funds) requirement...

3rd July 2009
BY Free Movement

Wending my way north on the train at an ungodly hour this morning, I found my reserved seat was opposite a fellow immigration lawyer I know from times past. We had a gossip, and he tells me that he was recently at Processions House, the temporary home of the Senior...

15th June 2009
BY Free Movement

The determination concerns the award of a qualification for the purposes of Tier 1: Post Study Work rather than the bigger issue of the silly maintenance requirements. Senior Immigration Judge Spencer finds that a person has not been awarded a qualification until they have received the qualification certificate. My own...

9th June 2009
BY Free Movement

The Home Office have today announced some changes to the Points Based System for Tier 4 students. In summary, the main changes are: 1. Transitional arrangements on maintenance are extended to 30 September 2009, meaning the applicant need only show the necessary money in their bank account at the date...

1st June 2009
BY Free Movement

There are reports that the Home Office just conceded a judicial review against the maintenance requirements under the Points Based System (PBS). This could be a very important development, and more posts (or comments, below) will follow as details become available. The challenge appears to have been based on the...

26th May 2009
BY Free Movement

The Home Office recently increased the minimum age for both spouses to 21 if a foreign spouse is to enter the UK on a spouse visa. The same requirements apply to unmarried, same sex and civil partners. As discussed previously on this blog, the justification given by the Home Office...

26th May 2009
BY Free Movement

The flunky that writes the Home Office press releases really needs to tone it down and get a grip. One of the latest batches of press releases is entitled ‘Tough new rules target bogus colleges and education cheats‘. The words ‘bogus’ and ‘cheats’ are very strong indeed. Yet there is...

31st March 2009
BY Free Movement

News from ILPA is that the recent trend towards rejecting in-country applications to switch to become unmarried partners is a temporary blip. A strict reading of immigration rule 295D(i) shows that, unlike for spouses and civil partners, a person with leave to enter the UK (as opposed to leave to...

23rd February 2009
BY Free Movement

UKBA have announced a limited concession to the rise in the visa age to 21 for spouses and partners. The concession is simply that the rule will not be applied to spouses and partners seeking entry to accompany or join immigrants in the temporary visa categories, such as students or...

15th December 2008
BY Free Movement

Free Movement may be cursed. Almost as soon as I blogged about DP3/96 it was scrapped, and now the same has happened to DP5/96. Phil Woolas has withdrawn DP5/96 as of 9 December 2008. This was the seven year policy under which a child resident in the UK for seven...

10th December 2008
BY Free Movement

I want briefly to acknowledge the passing of the Working Holiday Maker scheme today. It was one of the last vestiges of the favourable treatment of Commonwealth countries and their nationals. It was always problematic, to be honest. Whites could get into the country under the scheme but non-whites could...

27th November 2008
BY Free Movement

UPDATE: the seven year children rule has been scrapped. Read more here. — There are two immigration rules that can be used to acquire settlement (Indefinite Leave to Remain, or ILR) after a long period of residence in the UK. There is also a third option, which I will also...

25th November 2008
BY Free Movement

Well, this is a bit of a surprise. “Cameron, David” has lodged an Early Day Motion opposing the latest change in the immigration rules (both latest changes: typically, the first set were badly drafted and needed almost instant amendment after publication). Thanks to John O at NCADC for spotting this development....

12th November 2008
BY Free Movement

The Home Office has announced that major changes to the student rules will apply from March 2009. Allegedly, students are being brought within the ‘points based scheme‘. However, anyone reading the Statement of Intent with the details of the new rules will quickly see that it is a complete misnomer...

5th November 2008
BY Free Movement

Only yesterday I was telling someone there is no timescale for the Home Office to introduce this controversial measure, but today it has been announced it will take effect from 27 November 2008. The history is that a consultation was put out in 2007 about raising the minimum age of...

4th November 2008
BY Free Movement

The Tribunal have just issued a determination holding that proxy marriages in Brazil must be recognised in English law. The case is called CB (Validity of marriage: proxy marriage) Brazil [2008] UKAIT 00080. There seem to be a lot of these Brazilian proxy marriages about at the moment. I had an...

30th October 2008
BY Free Movement

[UPDATE: case overturned by Supreme Court] In a case called AM (Ethiopia) & Ors v Entry Clearance Officer [2008] EWCA Civ 1082 the Court of Appeal has just upheld the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal’s approach to the question of what lawyers call ‘third party support’. Third party support is financial support offered...

21st October 2008
BY Free Movement

The new Immigration Minister, Phil Woolas, yesterday announced the announcement of new rules for visitors. Spot the deliberate tautology? The Home Office seems to have improved the amount of warning it now gives us when making planned changes to the rules (although the debacle around the no return rule might...

17th October 2008
BY Free Movement

It sounds from various internet forums as if the British High Commission at Canberra is getting tough on applicants for Tier 1. Where applications have been submitted that include evidence (e.g. payslips) that show the person has worked for more than the permitted 12 months while on a working holiday...

11th September 2008
BY Free Movement

Favourite shortage occupation: meteorologists It’s official: we don’t have enough home-grown talent in the weather forecasting department and need to import skilled weatherpersons from abroad. In order to tell us that it will rain again. The other highlight is ballet dancers. The full list is here. It relates to the introduction...

9th September 2008
BY Free Movement

News from the front line is that Entry Clearance Officers (ECOs) are overturning refusals under immigration rule 320(7B) that were made before the string of concessions was announced. Just ask for a review, you shouldn’t have to make a second application and pay the whacking great fee for their ‘service’...

13th June 2008
BY Free Movement

One of the annoyingly frequent changes to the immigration rules has just been issued and can be found here. These sometimes come out as often as fortnightly, and I can remember a number of occasions when they have been so ill conceived they’ve had to withdraw them immediately. They once...

10th June 2008
BY Free Movement

Thanks for those who posted comments pointing the way to updated guidance to visa officers on the issue of contriving to frustrate immigration rules. The guidance is here and reads as follows: ‘Contrived in a significant way to undermine the intentions of the immigration rules’ is where an applicant has...

5th June 2008
BY Free Movement

Following on from the parliamentary debate last week, the Entry Clearance Guidance (ECG, until recently rather quaintly called the Diplomatic Service Instructions – I always thought the idea visa officers were diplomatic was rather optimistic) on immigration rule 320(7B), the automatic re-entry ban for overstayers and other breachers of immigration laws, has...

20th May 2008
BY Free Movement

Some great news on the re-entry ban saga. There was an unusually good debate in the Commons last night, when several MPs managed to put the screws on Liam Byrne, the Minister, and extracted three excellent concessions. All credit to those responsible, who appear to be Simon Hughes, John Spellar...

15th May 2008
BY Free Movement

The Home Office has managed to change the online guidance on DP3/96 surprisingly rapidly and these are now available to read. See chapter 53, section 53.3 of the Enforcement Instructions and Guidance (formerly known as the Operating Enforcement Manual or OEM). The EIG are addressed to immigration officers and other immigration...

14th May 2008
BY Free Movement

The Government has lost yet again. I’m beginning to feel embarrassed for them. These repeated legal defeats smack of a basic failure to comprehend the idea of rule of law. That’s OK with individual politicians, of whom you can’t generally expect very much, but it is deeply worrying with a whole Government equipped as...

2nd May 2008
BY Free Movement

In terms of scraping the bottom of the barrel, this is beaten only by the withdrawal of the non-removal policy for over 65s. Why oh why would they bother? Since at least 1993, there has been a policy that where a British citizen marries a foreign national who is here illegally...

25th April 2008
BY Free Movement

An interesting case is circulating amongst immigration lawyers at the moment but has not been officially reported. The Asylum and Immigration Tribunal reporting process is somewhat opaque, to put it mildly. Back in The Day, the tribunal used to send copies of all determinations to various organisations, and then lawyers...

22nd April 2008
BY Free Movement

Liam Byrne, the Immigration Minister, has written to the Immigration Law Practitioners Association (ILPA) with some further clarification on the no return amendment to paragraph 320 of the immigration rules (see here, here and here for previous posts on this). There are no shocks, really, but he does rather usefully...

14th April 2008
BY Free Movement

The Home Office and UK Visas have published guidance on their website about how their decision-makers should apply the re-entry ban and the concession that was announced. Unfortunately, they appear to be sticking to the strict terms of the concession that was announced in Parliament, meaning that the concession only...

8th April 2008
BY Free Movement

In response to a comment left on my last post, I should make it clear that the concession as it stands in Hansard only applies to people currently in the UK who leave before 1 October 2008.  This really does not make sense as it penalises those who have already...

19th March 2008
BY Free Movement

Immigration lawyers have been shocked by Government proposals to introduce from 1 April 2008 a re-entry ban on immigrants who have previously breached UK immigration laws. The ban was debated in the House of Lords last night. This is very rare for changes to the immigration rules, which are usually...

18th March 2008
BY Free Movement

Permission was granted today by Mr Justice Sullivan in a judicial review of the decision to retrospectively change the immigration rules on the qualifying criteria for settlement under the Highly Skilled Migrant Programme. The case will now proceed to a full hearing. The background is that since 2002 the government...

30th November 2007
BY Free Movement

I said some time ago that I would do a post on this subject and here it is… The maintenance requirement is one of the key tests in the immigration rules, and it applies to all categories of immigrant except refugees and their families. To meet the maintenance rule a person must show...

7th August 2007
BY Free Movement

In the fourth quarter of 2006, the most recent statistics available on asylum applications, 730 unaccompanied children applied for asylum in the United Kingdom. The total number of child asylum applicants for the whole year was 2855. Unaccompanied asylum seeking children, or UASCs as they are sometimes referred to in...

22nd May 2007
BY Free Movement

On 1 May 2007 a new immigration category was created, called the International Graduates Scheme. This supersedes and replaces the previous Science and Engineering Graduates Scheme, affectionately known as SEGS. The change was effected by Statement of Changes Cm 7075 and has already been incorporated into the online edition of...

21st May 2007
BY Free Movement
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