With Halloween approaching, a refugee charity is combining spooky tales with support for free movement. The Dead Poets Live event in London on Saturday 28 October promises “the most terrifying poems ever written”, read by a collection of well-known actors. It is not known whether the works of “madness, despair...
In a report published today a group of experts on modern slavery reveal that uncertainty, confusion and threats to EU migrants as a result of Brexit is making it more likely that EU workers will face labour exploitation in the UK. This is a very good, thoughtful report. I’m a...
The Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, has announced that the Law Commission will conduct a review of the Immigration Rules. The review came to light in Rudd’s oral evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee on 17 October but Law Commission staff had already begun meetings before then, including with me....
In 2011, Russell and Ellen Felber set up the award-winning Torridon Guest House in Inverness. It has hundreds of stellar reviews across TripAdvisor and similar sites. The New Yorkers made their home in the Highlands having fallen in love with the area during a holiday there, initially spending £300,000 to...
The Upper Tribunal has granted an application for judicial review in a case concerning service of a curtailment letter, holding that: (i) The effect of Article 8ZA of the Immigration (Leave to Enter and Remain) Order 2000 (SI No. 2000/1161), considered in tandem with the Home Office published policy, is that where...
Today saw the release of the Advocate General’s Opinion in the Court of Justice of the European Union joined cases of C-316/16 B v Land Baden-Württemberg and C-424/16 Secretary of State for the Home Department v Franco Vomero. The issue in these cases concerns the entitlement of European citizens to the ‘enhanced’ level of...
The case of Visa Joy Ltd will be of interest to immigration advisers regulated by the Office of the Immigration Services Commissioner (OISC). The OISC makes sure that immigration advisers meet certain standards and are “fit and competent” to provide immigration advice and services. It will register as immigration advisers...
David Bolt, the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration, is inspecting the Right to Rent measures in the 2014 and 2016 Immigration Acts. These require landlords to check the immigration status of prospective tenants before renting them a home. The Right to Rent scheme forms part of the hostile environment...
Nadeem Anjum applied for a Tier 1 (Entrepreneur) visa in early 2015. It was refused. The Entry Clearance Officer took the view, following an interview with Mr Anjum, that he was not a “genuine entrepreneur”. Since rights of appeal against Points Based System applications were removed, judicial consideration of the...
Last week, we discussed the case of the Waterman family. Simon Waterman, a British citizen, had suffered a life-altering stroke, but the needs of Mr Waterman and his two children did not to the Home Office constitute “exceptional circumstances” in respect of Mrs Waterman’s application for further leave to remain....
The Upper Tribunal, in a case concerning service of a curtailment letter to an address in Bangladesh, has held that: (i) Where the Secretary of State relies on a curtailment notice as having been deemed to have been given by being placed “on file’ in accordance with article 8ZA(4) of...
The difficulty of presenting asylum claims based on religion is well known. Such claims raise difficult evidential problems, which are addressed in this detailed post by Colin Yeo. But AS (Iran) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2017] EWCA Civ 1539 seems to pose a novel difficulty: should a claim...
Free Movement’s pick of the past week’s media reporting on immigration and asylum. Last week saw a flurry of Brexit business. Theresa May wrote an open letter to EU citizens living in the UK in a less than convincing attempt to reassure (Huffington Post). It was sent ahead of a...
The government has announced changes to the National Referral Mechanism, the official framework for identifying those who have been trafficked or enslaved. The Modern Slavery Taskforce announced the first three of what are to be a serious of improvements: a single, expert unit to be created in the Home Office...
An ex-soldier who struggles to walk, speak or perform basic household tasks following a stroke has been told that he must look after his children without their Philippine national mother because these do not constitute “exceptional circumstances” in the eyes of the Home Office. Simon and Leah Waterman returned to...
Our new ebook guide Naturalising as a British citizen is now available for purchase for £9.99 (free for Free Movement members). For most people, an application for naturalisation is something they can complete on their own. This ebook helps individual applicants to do just that. In 2016 just shy of 150,000...
Following on from the session last week in which I and others were called to give evidence to the Home Affairs Committee, a formal inquiry into the Home Office delivery of Brexit has now been launched. Written submissions are invited by the committee and further oral evidence will be heard....
Today, Anti-Slavery Day, the Supreme Court has handed down judgments in cases that look at the extent to which diplomatic and state immunity allow diplomats to traffic and enslave their domestic workers with impunity. Traffickers will sleep a little less easily in their beds tonight. In Reyes v Al-Malki [2017] UKSC...
Eight months and a warning from the Information Commissioner later, the Home Office has finally replied to my Freedom of Information request on waiting times for EU residence documents. The figures only go to the end of 2016 and it seems likely that waiting times have increased yet further since...
Welcome to the August 2017 edition of the Free Movement immigration update podcast. This month I’m starting with a run through of a few relevant bits of news and some blog posts to highlight rather than cover in depth, then moving on to a series of cases and posts about...
An immigration lawyer praised for his “good deeds” among the Chinese community has been struck off by the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal. Vay Sui Ip, a partner at Manchester firm Sandbrook Solicitors, was prosecuted by the Solicitors Regulation Authority over judicial reviews issued as a means of “frustrating deportations“. The tribunal,...
Grants of up to £30,000 are now available through the Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association to promote the rights of vulnerable migrant children and young adults. ILPA has relaunched the Strategic Legal Fund for Vulnerable Young Migrants. The fund will provide grants for organisations to: undertake pre-litigation research, or make third...
In AMS v SSWP (PC) (final decision) [2017] UKUT 381 (AAC), Upper Tribunal Judge Ward dismissed a Dutch widow’s appeal against the refusal of her claim for state pension credit on the basis that she had no right to reside in the UK. Although a disappointing result for Mrs AMS, the...
This week the story of Dan Newton and his family has hit the newspapers. This post explains why the Home Office has acted as it has. It is not a mistake. Since harsh new rules were introduced in 2012, UK immigration policy does not usually allow British citizens working abroad...
Free Movement’s pick of the past week’s media reporting on immigration and asylum. The fallout from now-notorious Home Office deportation letters, sent in error to EU citizens over the summer, continued last week as the government agreed to compensate 106 recipients of instructions to leave the country (Daily Mirror). Home...
What can immigration lawyers do when immigration law is uncertain? This was not, admittedly, the advertised theme of the Immigration Law Practitioners’ Association annual seminar on free movement, which took place on 4 October. But the enervating effects of unpredictability and ambiguity in immigration law and policy ran through most...
The Home Office has revised its policy on the immigration “amnesty” for survivors of the Grenfell Tower fire. In short, the government was offering a grant (or extension) of 12 months leave to enter or remain, with access to public funds included as well as the right to work. The 12 months...
James Hanratty RD, known as a compassionate and sometimes rather unconventional judge, will be a familiar name and indeed face to any London-based barrister specialising in immigration work. I for one was relieved rather than panicked when I would see that he was my client’s allocated judge in the morning...
A surrogacy arrangement is, broadly speaking, where a woman carries and delivers a child for another couple or person. Under section 2(1) of the Surrogacy Arrangements Act 1985, it is a criminal offence for a person on a commercial basis to initiate or take part in a surrogacy agreement in the UK....
The Home Office has lost a judicial review over its controversial change to the definition of torture in a claim brought by unlawfully detained torture victims. The judgment is in the case of Medical Justice & Ors v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2017] EWHC 2461 (Admin). In short, the...
The Honourable Sir Nicholas John Gorrod Blake retired from the High Court (Queen’s Bench) with effect from 3 October 2017. Sir Nicholas Blake (68) was called to the Bar (M) in 1974, took Silk in 1994 and was elected a Bencher in 2002. He was appointed an Assistant Recorder in...
In ND & NT v Spain, the European Court of Human Rights decided that the expulsion of two sub-Saharan migrants from a set of barriers surrounding the Spanish territory of Melilla breached their rights under Article 4 of Protocol 4 ECHR (prohibition of collective expulsions of aliens) and Article 13...
Two immigration law practitioners, Chris Williams and Nicola Braganza, made headlines today for their part in an investigation highlighting “racial profiling” in UK immigration checks. The pair, both Garden Court tenants, worked with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism to analyse Home Office data showing that almost one in five people stopped for...
In one of his final judgments as outgoing President, Mr Justice McCloskey launched a bitter broadside at the conduct of government lawyers in long-running litigation over the entry of refugee children. While the criticism of the solicitors at the Government Legal Department and of previous barristers instructed for the Home...
If you want to look up how the Immigration Act 2016 works in practice, A Guide to the Immigration Act 2016 by Alison Harvey and Zoe Harper is the definitive guide to the legislation. More comprehensive than my own introductory ebook to the Act, Harvey and Harper dive straight into the detail. Every single section of...
Welcome to the July 2017 edition of the Free Movement immigration update podcast. This month I begin by running through a whole load of judgments and determinations, including from the Supreme Court on sham marriages, some cases on procedure and costs and some shocking cases on unlawful detention. I then...
Stateless people in the UK face enormous hurdles in the road to becoming British citizens. One of those barriers is the extraordinarily high cost of acquiring British citizenship, writes Asylum Aid’s Cynthia Orchard. The UK government has taken some steps to ensure its approach to statelessness complies with international law....
Ovidiu-Mihaita Petrea emigrated from Romania to Greece, ready to build a new life there. However, he made a big mistake: he committed robbery and was sentenced by a Greek criminal court in 2011. The case is C-184/16 Ovidiu-Mihăiţă Petrea v Ypourgos Esoterikon kai Dioikitikis Anasygrotisis. Page contentsExclusion order and returnCJEU decisionWhat does this...
In Secretary of State for the Home Department v KE (Nigeria) [2017] EWCA Civ 382, the Court of Appeal tackled the narrow, but important, issue as to whether a non-British citizen who is convicted and sentenced to a hospital order with restrictions under sections 37 and 41 of the Mental Health Act 1983 is “a foreign criminal...
