In addition to the deluge of new Immigration Rules and legislation we faced in the May years, and now the looming Brexit iceberg, a major (if inevitable) change of recent times has been the digitisation of immigration applications. Unlike with Rules a ...

Migrants who would not otherwise have the right to live in the UK can acquire that right by getting married to a British national, EU citizen or another migrant who is settled here. In theory, that route is open to abuse by couples who are not really ...

A migrant’s marital status can make a huge difference to their right to be in the UK. The spouse of an EU national exercising treaty rights in the UK will automatically have a right to reside in the UK. The spouses of British or settled citizens do ...

Where parents have already or are relocating to the United Kingdom and both parents will end up in the UK (or one parent will and the other is deceased) then the Immigration Rules permit them to bring their children. The main requirements are that the ...

There has been considerable fuss made in the last week about a handful of refugees crossing the English Channel to claim asylum here in the UK. Here I’m going to look at the numbers, the wider context, what we know about refugee decision making ...

Windrush The defining event of 2018 in the world of immigration law was without doubt the exposure of what has become known as the Windrush scandal. The way the scandal was eventually picked up by all news outlets caught everyone by surprise, me inclu ...

The High Court has ruled that a claimant is entitled to extra unlawful detention damages for frustration and anxiety where the Home Office fails to provide a release address. The guidance on this issue provided by R (Diop) v Secretary of State for th ...

When Sergei and Yulia Skripal were near-fatally poisoned with Novichok in Salisbury in March 2018, suspicion immediately fell upon the Russian state. The British government released footage of the men said to be responsible and the aliases under which ...

Brexit notwithstanding, 2018 is likely to be remembered as the year the lid was blown on the government’s hostile environment policy. The debate about how difficult we want the lives of migrants unlawfully in the UK to be has now caught the atte ...

There is one, overwhelming, message from the immigration White Paper published on 19 December. It is mentioned in the Foreword by the Prime Minister, and the Foreword from the Secretary of State for the Home Department. The aims of the White Paper are ...

Reading the case of R (Prathipati) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (discretion – exceptional circumstances) [2018] UKUT 427 (IAC), it is impossible not to feel deep admiration for Ms Prathipati. The 28-year-old Indian citizen appear ...

Welcome to the November 2018 edition of the Free Movement immigration update podcast. This month we again take it from the top with the Supreme Court’s latest attempt to cut through the complexity of our immigration law before turning to a major ...