Yesterday, the Home Office published a number of reviews of internal data and processes relating to the hostile environment. The reviews include a range of data, including figures like 450,000 people being flagged as unauthorised migrants or in breach of visa conditions between 2014 and 2018. And moves on from...
One month into the job, it’s clear that Suella Braverman is good at making the headlines. However, some of her rhetoric may seem familiar. The government’s hostile environment policy is well-rehearsed and the media has played a significant and long-term role in developing the rhetoric that we see today. It...
The “hostile environment” that has come to define the UK’s approach to immigration policy is by now such a well-known phrase that I wonder if it has lost all meaning. It was no doubt used as a point of pride by those who popularised the term during Theresa May’s tenure...
Dr Melanie Griffiths and I have spent four years working on an academic article mapping, explaining, analysing and evaluating the hostile environment policy. It is finally done and dusted and is open access, so you can take a look over at Critical Social Policy. I approached Melanie to co-author something...
A second report in the space of two days from the immigration inspector, this time on the Home Office’s use of sanctions and penalties. These are an integral part of the “hostile environment” policy of outsourcing immigration control to the private sector. Companies can be fined if, for example, they...
The government has no way of knowing whether its flagship “hostile environment” policy on unauthorised migrants is working, the National Audit Office has found. In a report published today, the NAO says that the Home Office is “currently unable to assess” whether hostile environment measures “have any meaningful impact on...
In a review of Amelia Gentleman’s book The Windrush Betrayal, David Goodhart of the Policy Exchange think tank said this: Over … [the] period [2004-2018] the number of voluntary removals rose sharply from 3,566 in 2004 to 28,655 in 2016, perhaps some evidence that, despite Gentleman’s assertions, the hostile environment...
If you haven’t noticed immigrants being blamed for everything from crime to low wages and overstretched public services, you have not been paying attention. In Hostile Environment: How Immigrants Became Scapegoats, the writer, journalist and academic Maya Goodfellow examines how this came to be. In short, decades of immigration policy...
All eyes were on Birmingham yesterday for the launch of the Labour Party’s manifesto. Billed as “radical” by Jeremy Corbyn, its stated purpose is to offer “real change” and to build a fairer Britain. But this sense of radicalism does not wholly extend to Labour’s immigration policy. Those who were...
Today, the High Court has ruled that the ‘Right to Rent’ checks, a key policy of Theresa May’s so-called “hostile”, now rebranded as “compliant environment”, cause landlords to discriminate against prospective tenants on racial and nationality grounds. Mr Justice Martin Spencer has handed down a damning verdict excoriating the government, saying that the scheme not merely risks causing illegal...
Theresa May declared in an interview with the Telegraph in May 2012 that she wanted to create a “really hostile environment” for irregular migrants in the UK. In this blog post we look at the evolution of the hostile environment, consider what measures fall within the overarching policy and examine the effects...
A group of charities and NGOs have launched a new guide on immigrants’ rights. It places with particular emphasis on coping with hostile environment measures designing to make life intolerable for undocumented migrants. Know Your Rights: A Guide for Migrants promises to help migrants “understand your rights in a situation where immigration rules...
From this week, defendants in the criminal courts must state their nationality. Anyone who fails to do so can be jailed for up to a year. The Criminal Procedure (Amendment No. 4) Rules 2017 (2017 No. 915 (L. 13)) came into force on 13 November 2017. They stipulate that: 5. The court―...
Warning: contains spoilers. And information about the plot too. Let me say at the outset that Paddington 2 is a deeply unrealistic film. As a Paddington fan and father of two young children I had no problem suspending my disbelief to allow for a talking bear. I was, for the...
The hostile environment policy is making it more difficult for the Home Office to keep track of foreign national offenders and could even push up crime, the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration has said. David Bolt’s inspection of the Home Office’s management of non-detained foreign national offenders reports...
Banks and building societies are to carry out immigration checks on a reported 70 million bank accounts in accordance with the Immigration Act 2016, amending the Immigration Act 2014. The provision ordering this will come into force on 30 October 2017. Regulations introducing a code of practice have been laid down. For...
Page contentsWhat is the hostile environment?Origins and development of the hostile environmentWho is affected by the hostile environment?What is the intention behind the hostile environment?Access to employment: employer sanctionsAccess to love: restrictions on marriage and relationshipsAccess to housing: the “right to rent”Access to health: NHS charging and data sharingAccess to...
The Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration, David Bolt, has published five new inspection reports. The most interesting is on the “hostile environment”, specifically the powers to deny driving licences and bank accounts to migrants unlawfully resident in the UK. The report reveals that the Interventions and Sanctions Directorate (“ISD”)...
I gave a 25 minute presentation on the Immigration Act 2014 and new Immigration Bill at the JUSTICE annual human rights conference yesterday. As an experiment, I tried recording myself and have combined the audio with the slides. Enjoy. Or not. I have also uploaded the audio track separately as...
This last weekend saw Sarah Teather reveal the mindset of Government towards migration, explaining her frustration at the lack of alternative voices on migration. I have previously written about the need for responsible journalism, but in hindsight this was probably unfair on the media.
...As the government’s Rwanda plan continues to court controversy, there is one area of their policy which by their measures could be seen to be succeeding: their efforts to stop Albanians from seeking refuge in the UK. Since 2019, the Migrant and Refugee Children’s Legal Unit at Islington Law Centre...
On 10 April 2024 the Home Office introduced a fee waiver process for those applying to extend their leave in Appendix Hong Kong BN(O) however the new process introduces barriers that do not exist for other routes and will be insurmountable for some applicants, through no fault of their own....
In recent months two cohorts of young people, those granted ‘Calais leave’ and those granted leave under section 67 of the Immigration Act 2016, have begun to reach the end of five years’ limited leave to remain. The immigration rules currently provide a route to either further limited leave or...
The Home Office has updated its guidance on voluntary returns, now re-named voluntary departures which now includes the possibility of sending those who agree to a safe third country. Although not explicitly named in the guidance, the intention is clearly to try to get people to agree to go to...
Welcome to the weekly Free Movement newsletter! Apparently since 7 October 2023 every entry clearance application made from Gaza has been rejected by the Home Office. That was the position up to the date of disclosure in this judicial review by a Palestinian refugee trying to bring his family to the UK, and there is no reason to...
A few days before the two-year anniversary of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the UK government announced a series of sweeping changes to the Ukraine schemes, giving just four hours’ notice of their implementation. Among the most significant changes are the closure of the Ukraine Family Scheme, and a new...
In Zhou & Ors v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2024] EWCA Civ 81 the Court of Appeal has re-affirmed the high threshold for challenging delays in decision-making by the Home Secretary and the scope of any appeal against a refusal to grant permission for judicial review. Background...
Welcome to the weekly Free Movement newsletter! I was pleased to see one of the three new asylum backlogs get some media coverage at the weekend. I have been baffled as to why the government created this situation ever since the Illegal Migration Act was first published in July last year. Essentially, they seem to have...
The Immigration Health Surcharge (IHS) is a fee levied on the majority of UK visa applications. The Immigration Health Surcharge is on top of other Home Office immigration fees and designed to land in a different government pocket. Also sometimes known as the NHS surcharge, it essentially adds £1,035 per...
Welcome to the weekly Free Movement newsletter! A lot less happened last week, which makes a nice change. The first thing I wanted to flag up is this Guardian article in which the Home Office said that it has been wrongly sending letters threatening people with being sent to Rwanda. As detailed in...
Significantly, a considerable number of British subjects who were then living in the United Kingdom free from residence conditions were excluded from automatic acquisition of patrial status. Page contentsAutomatic acquisition of indefinite leave to remainAutomatic acquisition of limited leave to remainExcluded from statusLong term consequences Automatic acquisition of indefinite leave...
The UK is falling significantly short of international labour standards. In fact, the government’s labour migration policy and wider hostile environment actively produces risks of labour exploitation. In 2022, labour exploitation was the most commonly reported form of adult modern slavery cases recorded on the National Referral Mechanism, amounting to...
Here, we look at the practicalities involved in getting a good medico-legal report. We have previously explained what a medico-legal report is and that article should be read alongside this one. These reports can be a game changer in cases involving vulnerable clients, but in the current climate it is...
Page contentsAssisting unlawful migrationFacilitating a breach of immigration lawHelping an asylum seeker enter the UKPiloting a rubber dinghy across the English ChannelFailure to comply with immigration controlThe 1971 Act offencesNon-cooperation with deportation or removalTraffickingUN definition of traffickingThe legislation in England and WalesThe legislation in Scotland and Northern IrelandEmployersDefinitionsSentencingLandlordsDefinitionsDefenceAgentsSentencing Assisting unlawful...
This course was published in October 2023. In recent years, judicial review – the primary mechanism for challenging the lawfulness of decisions made by public bodies – has been of ever increasing importance to immigration practitioners. This has been due to restrictions on or outright removal of statutory appeal rights,...
Judicial review is the primary mechanism for challenging the lawfulness of decisions made by public bodies. In recent years, it has been of ever increasing importance to immigration practitioners, due to restrictions on or outright removal of statutory appeal rights; and the expansion of hostile environment policies and powers affecting...
Theresa May’s unironically named book, The Abuse of Power, reveals that even now, five years later, she still does not understand what caused the Windrush scandal. She blames Clement Attlee’s government, other governments over the intervening years and issues a classic non-apology. It was anyone’s fault but hers. “At the...
Judicial review is the primary mechanism for challenging the lawfulness of decisions made by public bodies. It is of increasing importance to immigration practitioners. This is due to restrictions on or outright removal of statutory appeal rights, and the expansion of hostile environment policies and powers affecting people subject to...
Job title: Legal and Parliamentary Officer Organisation: Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association (ILPA) Duration: Permanent Location: Hybrid / London Annual leave: 25 days per annum Salary: £32,000 to £35,000 depending on skills and experience Working Hours: 35 hours per week, plus a lunch break (NB evening working is required to attend any scheduled evening meetings, which...
Today marks the 75th anniversary of the disembarking of the passengers on board the ship the HMT Empire Windrush at Tilbury docks on 22 June 1948. Even now, five years after the Windrush scandal broke, many well-informed and well-intentioned journalists, writers and policy-makers do not really grasp the true legal...
