If you are a serious UK immigration lawyer you should be a member of ILPA.

The Immigration Law Practitioners Association (ILPA) represents immigration lawyers and its objects are to:

• promote and improve the advising and representation of immigrants
• provide information to members on domestic and European immigration, refugee and nationality law
• secure a non-racist, non-sexist, just and equitable system of immigration, refugee and nationality law practice

It is an excellent organisation and lobbies very hard to pursue those objectives, as can be seen from the variety and quantity of submissions available on its website, which represents only a fraction of the output of the hard working staff. Many letters to ministers, civil servants and others are never published, but they do have influence. ILPA attends countless stakeholder and other meetings and even if their suggestions are not always adopted, their voice is certainly heard.

ILPA has had significant successes. Measures such as the no return rule would have been a lot worse were it not for ILPA, and the long overdue righting of historical nationality law wrongs in successive recent pieces of legislation can be laid at ILPA’s door.

There are two very good reasons to join ILPA. One is to be part of and contribute to such an excellent organisation, and thereby bask in a little reflected glory. It is a membership organisation and requires members in order to be effective. The second is that ILPA is an invaluable source of information and sometimes analysis through the member-only monthly mailing and the various sub committee email lists. They are in the process of significantly re-vamping their website, which should improve communication even further.

There are criteria for membership, and all new members have to be approved by the Executive Committee.

Free Movement urges* any immigration lawyer or other eligible person to join ILPA.

* Entirely of his own free will – I only just thought of including an exhortation to join ILPA on this site and can’t believe I didn’t think of it sooner.