The Upper Tribunal has ruled that Paragraph 339C of the Immigration Rules fails to accurately transpose the requirements of the Qualification Directive governing the grant of humanitarian protection. The outcome means that asylum seekers who face serious harm in their country of origin, even if that is not the country...
In one of the longest running bits of immigration litigation ever (not quite as long as the Cyprus Sovereign Base Area refugee cases…), the Afghan asylum seekers who arrived on a hijacked plane in 2000 have been granted general permission to appeal by the Upper Tribunal. The legal point is...
In the case of KV v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWCA Civ 2483 the Court of Appeal accepts that future statelessness is a relevant consideration in an appeal against deprivation of British citizenship obtained on the basis of fraud. The court also gives guidance on the...
In R (Safeer) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWCA Civ 2518 the Court of Appeal has misdirected itself on how to approach factual disputes in the context of an application for judicial review. The error did not affect the result because the appeal was bound to...
Theresa May has begun what the press is describing as a Brexit “fightback“, putting the case for the draft Brexit deal published last week. The deal’s saving grace, according to the Prime Minister, is that it ends EU free movement so far as the UK is concerned. Writing in the...
Protests have been held outside Campsfield House immigration removal centre on the last Saturday of the month for the last 20 years. The detention centre’s reputation has been scarred by escapes, riots and hunger strikes ever since it opened north of Oxford in 1993, although in recent years barbarities elsewhere...
The Home Office considers some foreign nationals living in the UK to be a threat to national security. Sometimes, to deport those individuals (as the government no doubt prefers) would be unlawful, because of how they would be treated on return to their country of origin. Perhaps the most notorious...
The Home Office has admitted that some potential victims of the Windrush scandal were not identified because they were incorrectly labelled as criminals. The failure to include these people in the review of how many members of the Windrush generation were wrongly removed or detained, revealed after probing from Parliament’s...
We do legal rather than political punditry on this blog, but the resignation this morning of two Cabinet ministers bodes ill for the chances of the draft Brexit deal being approved by parliament. Even before that, the negative reaction of Conservative MPs to the terms published last night led commentators to doubt...
1.1. The Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association (ILPA) drafted the following report as a joint commentary by experienced immigration practitioners on the EU Settlement Scheme. We hope this expertise assists in the development of the scheme and to achieve its intended purpose of safeguarding the rights of EU citizens living in...
The Supreme Court has allowed the appeal in the case of Rhuppiah v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] UKSC 58. Giving the sole judgment, Lord Wilson holds that a “precarious” immigration status is any status short of Indefinite Leave to Remain but allows the appeal on the...
Appellants in immigration cases would normally be delighted if a court made an unambiguous finding that the government had acted unfairly towards them. Not so the family of Bashar Al-Assad. In a very unusual judgment, the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC) in LA & Ors (Natualisation : Substantive) [2018] UKSIAC 1...
Following on from Chanda the other week, the Court of Appeal in Li [2018] EWCA Civ 2411 returns to the issue of false documents, this time in a judicial review case for an appellant attempting to make a Tier 1 application. In a previous application the appellant had submitted what appeared to...
Invalid applications: in recent years, this has become one of the trickiest and dense parts of our immigration law. It’s one of my favourite areas because it’s so interesting and technical (as those of you who attended the Immigration Law Masterclass Conference will know!). You might ask what the big...
A controversial agreement for the NHS to pass information about hospitalised migrants to the immigration authorities has been shelved, campaigners say. The Migrants’ Right Network and Liberty announced today that a legal challenge to an agreement for patient data to be shared with the Home Office has succeeded. A joint press...
The Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration, David Bolt has published a new report focusing on border controls at south coast seaports. Parts of the report make worrying reading in light of the increased demands on those ports after Brexit. For one thing, the Border Force reports being understaffed...
A blog post I wrote dated 11 January 2018 regarding visit visa appeals in the Court of Appeal could be read as implying a failure by leading and junior counsel for the Secretary of State Lisa Giovannetti QC and Colin Thomannc to bring to the attention of the Court of...
On 2 November 2018, UK Visas and Immigration launched a new system for visa applications made within the UK. It involves an overhauled online application process and new Visa and Citizenship Application Service centres operated by outsourcing firms Sopra Steria. The first centre opened on 9 November. Premium Service Centres will...
Back in 2012, I started what has become a tradition of posting remembrance poems linked to trauma. While most of us lawyers know nothing of war personally, many of our refugee clients have passed through something like it. The resulting trauma carries echoes of the suffering of the returning soldiers...
There is widespread media coverage today of the number of foreign criminals that have disappeared while on immigration bail in the past few years. The Mirror gives a flavour: Killers and rapists among hundreds of foreign criminals lost by Home Office… figures show 450 foreign national offenders absconded in two-and-a-half...
In a robust judgment yesterday, the High Court found the decision of the Home Office to cut weekly benefits to asylum-seeking victims of trafficking was unlawful. The rate was previously set at £65 per week and was dramatically cut by 42% from 1 March 2018, to £37.75 per week (the same as the...
The High Court’s recent decision in R (Shafikul Islam) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWHC 2939 (Admin) is yet another case on the vexed issue of whether appeals against refusals of EEA residence cards are suspensive of removal (spoiler: no). I previously expressed grave reservations that...
A judge has rebuked the Home Office for failing to release an asylum seeker despite receiving a “Rule 35” medical report stating that he was suffering from a severe mental illness which had deteriorated because of detention. In R (Bah) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWHC...
Yet again the Home Office has come under fire for its treatment of a European citizen, this time for denying an EEA residence card to the American husband of an Irish national living in Northern Ireland. The case of Gemma Capparelli and her husband was reported in the Guardian, and...
R (Liral Veget Training And Recruitment Ltd) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWHC 2941 (Admin) was a challenge to the Home Office’s decision to revoke a company’s licence to sponsor non-EU citizens for work visas. It failed. The case was about the Tier 2 (General) visas issued...
In Chanda v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWCA Civ 2424 the Court of Appeal grappled with paragraph 322(1A) of the Immigration Rules. The court looked briefly at the considerations that arise out of a false document and a finding of deception, stressing that the two issues...
Having been an immigration solicitor for around 20 years, I’m used to pretty chaotic weeks. The past week has been one of the most frustrating following the immigration minister’s surprisingly unpolished performance in front of the Home Affairs Committee which CJ covered in an earlier post. To some extent, it’s expected...
The toxic wasteland of the Daily Mail’s back catalogue on the topic of immigration needs no introduction. It is perhaps no great surprise that, asked to spend some time at Taylor House immigration tribunal recently, the pithy headline for Mail reporter Sue Reid’s subsequent splash read as follows: Can it...
In ST (Afghanistan) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWCA Civ 2382, the Court of Appeal has ruled that the First-tier Tribunal correctly applied both domestic and Strasbourg case law on international relocation to Kabul. The arguments in this appeal were about an tribunal determination made on...
Mass confusion following the immigration minister’s evidence (full transcript here) to the Home Affairs committee yesterday: this was a terrible appearance by Caroline Nokes @CommonsHomeAffs yesterday. Sajid Javid needs to go back as a matter of urgency; give clear answers and put out the govt’s No Deal advice on citizens asap...
To go along with the private jet and luxury yacht, the current ‘must-have’ for a discerning multi-millionaire seems to be a range of international passports. The phenomenon of citizenship by investment has emerged over the last few decades and developed into a billion dollar industry. These “CIP” schemes enable the super-rich...
The Times is getting in on the legal rankings game with a list of the top 200 solicitors’ firms as selected by lawyers themselves. The newspaper says that it worked with market research firm Statista to contact over 20,000 solicitors and ask them “other than your own firm, which practice...
The Court of Appeal in Secretary of State for the Home Department v Christy [2018] EWCA Civ 2378 has comprehensively rejected an argument by the Home Office seeking to limit the obligation to consider “Surinder Singh” applications by extended family members. Ben Collins QC appeared pro bono for Ms Christy. Free...
A “virtual tour” of the immigration detention estate, which promises to shine a spotlight on the hidden world of immigration detention, launched last week and runs until 18 December. The Unlocking Detention campaign uses social media to bring the UK’s immigration removal centres to public attention. Welcome to #Unlocked18 week 2,...
Figures obtained by Free Movement show that fewer than two thousand non-EU carers rely on EU law for their right to live in the UK. The relatively small number of people relying on these “derived rights of residence” raises questions about why the government appears set to deny them settlement...
The Home Secretary has published the results of a review into DNA testing at the Home Office, apologising to migrants who were told that genetic testing was compulsory for certain family visas. Sajid Javid also announced a potentially wide-ranging review of the immigration system more generally in a sign of...
This case is an unlawful detention claim based on shocking failures by the Home Office to comply with rules on how victims of torture and trafficking should be treated. In R (SW) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWHC 2684 (Admin), the High Court has ruled that...
I’m at a conference on EU free movement law today, organised by the Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association. One of the many useful pieces of information I’ve picked up already is about rights of appeal for extended family members of EU citizens who are denied residence cards. This issue has a...
The Supreme Court has today handed down judgment in four linked cases all concerning the best interests of children who themselves face removal from the UK or whose parent faces removal from the UK. The case is likely to be referred to as KO (Nigeria) and Others v Secretary of...
The Guardian has already reported this case as “Home Office ordered to pay damages to sex-trafficking victim”, but on Bailii it is simply R (ZV) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWHC 2725 (Admin). The media attention is due to the horrifying facts: the claimant ZV says that...
