All Articles: October 2008

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

There has been a fascinating little story unfolding around a case called SD (expert evidence) Lebanon [2008] UKAIT 00078. The Guardian picked up the story and ran an article on it on Monday. Dr Alan George is a respected academic and a specialist in the Middle East. He has been doing...

29th October 2008
BY Free Movement

In the case of EM (Lebanon) v SSHD [2008] UKHL 64 the House of Lords looked at Article 8 again (having done so earlier this year as well) and delivered another landmark judgment. It is believed to be the first time in European legal history that a higher court has found...

28th 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

The Country of Origin Information Service (COIS) at the Home Office is the successor to the generally derided Country Information and Policy Unit (CIPU). CIPU reports were poorly researched and outright biased against asylum seekers, although many immigration judges mistakenly treated them as the whole truth. In 2004 the Immigration Advisory Service...

16th October 2008
BY Free Movement

UPDATE: It would seem that Mark Ockelton has been sitting in the Administrative Court as a deputy high court judge and has not been promoted to the High Court bench. — A while ago I posted some gossip I had heard at the end of the summer: that Mark Ockelton,...

14th October 2008
BY Free Movement

Further to my last post on this subject, it turns out that my surprise was entirely justified, as a different and more senior panel of the tribunal has decided, basically, that Metock changes nothing and it should be business as usual. The case is SM (Metock; extended family members) Sri Lanka...

12th October 2008
BY Free Movement

Since the introduction of fees for immigration applications in 2003, the Home Office has become fanatical about collection of these fees. If the fee isn’t included with the application, no application is considered to have been made, so your leave to remain might expire while you think the Home Office...

9th October 2008
BY Free Movement

In the selfless pursuit of immigration-related gossip and news, last Friday I went along to a gathering at a wine bar that was formerly the office of the Refugee Legal Centre. The surroundings have been somewhat improved since the RLC days, it turned out. The gathering was organised by two ex members...

8th October 2008
BY Free Movement

So, Phil “Muslims are Inbred” Woolas (left) is the new immigration minister, and Liam “Dessicated Calculated Machine” Byrne is out (and up). Woolas didn’t waste time before playing the populist, and immediately announced that he thought there ought to be a limit to the population. Unless he is planning a...

7th October 2008
BY Free Movement

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