A v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2016] CSIH 38 is an important 2016 decision from the Court of Session in Scotland, the full impact of which has still to be felt. It concerns the Immigration Rules, as they apply to spouses of refugees ...

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 Ma ...

About 18 months ago, the Home Office announced that refugees would no longer get indefinite leave to remain automatically after being in the UK for five years. Officials are now supposed to review whether the refugee still needs the protection of the ...

So says the Upper Tribunal in PA (Protection claim, Respondent’s enquiries, Bias) [2018] UKUT 337 (IAC); at least if your confidentiality is preserved. Officials checked Bangladeshi police records for evidence of persecution PA, a Bangladeshi na ...

In AS (Guinea) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWCA Civ 2234, the Court of Appeal has in effect rebuffed an attempt by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to make it easier to establish statelessness. The court ruled that the sta ...

A new statement of changes to the Immigration Rules was laid on 10 October 2018. There is some very welcome news, including more flexibility given to caseworkers on whether and when they can write to applicants to ask for missing documents. (Whether ...

This is the second of two Court of Appeal cases this year about whether the Home Office behaved unlawfully towards vulnerable child asylum seekers during and after the demolition of the Calais refugee camp in 2016. The first appeal, R (Citizens UK) v ...

In C-369/17 Ahmed, the Court of Justice of the European Union has held that member states must take account of all the circumstances of the crime committed by an individual before deciding that it is a “serious crime” which justifies exclu ...

The UK authorities do not emerge with much humanitarian credit from this newly reported tribunal case. For years the government has strenuously resisted the obviously meritorious and compassionate request by a stateless refugee family to be reunited.� ...

TF and MA v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] CSIH 58 is a recent Court of Session (Inner House) decision which addresses two key themes within the immigration and asylum sphere. Firstly, the extent to which adverse credibility finding ...

In 1985, immigration solicitor Sheona York read an article in the Guardian about a new technology for proving someone’s identity. She called the inventor, Professor Alec Jeffreys, at the University of Leicester to see whether this “DNA tes ...

Claiming asylum is an important human right backed by the United Nations Refugee Convention and recognised by countries around the world. In order to make this right a reality in practice, countries like the UK have set up systems by which people must ...

The recently published UK Lesbian & Gay Immigration Group report Still Falling Short examines the Home Office’s decision-making in  asylum applications from LGBTQI+ people. The report is a qualitative study of mainly lesbian, gay and bisexual c ...

In PK (Draft evader; punishment; minimum severity) Ukraine [2018] UKUT 241 (IAC) the Upper Tribunal has refused to protect a Ukrainian draft evader despite acknowledging that there is evidence that taking part in the conflict might involve committing ...

What’s another few months when you’ve been waiting two decades? For the past 20 years, a group of Iraqi and Syrian Kurds have been marooned on a British military base in Cyprus, recognised as refugees but denied settlement in the UK. In R ...

The Home Office now believes that the Sudanese country guidance cases should no longer be followed, based on a change of country circumstances. Its “lines to take” now argue that while non-Arabs are likely to be at risk in the Darfur regio ...

The Court of Justice of the European Union has taken a strict approach to time limits on take back requests imposed by the Dublin III Regulation. In case C‑213/17 X v Staatssecretaris van Veiligheid en Justitie, the court ruled that Italy had respon ...

AAH (Iraqi Kurds – internal relocation) (CG) [2018] UKUT 212 (IAC) is a recent country guidance case on the availability of internal relocation for Iraqi Kurds to the Iraqi Kurdish Region. This case updates some of the guidance contained in AA ( ...

Nour Taleb runs the Sweety House, the latest popular Syrian business to open in Edinburgh. Mr Taleb fled Syria in 2012, arriving in the UK as a refugee under the government’s Syrian Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme in 2016. A similar tale ...

There are a considerable number of asylum claims in the UK by young Afghan boys and men. The number should not be overstated, though. The latest immigration statistics show that Afghans are still outside the top five nationalities claiming asylum in t ...

“I would not open windows into men’s souls,” said Elizabeth I. But that is exactly the task facing those charged with deciding asylum claims based on religion or belief. Is a professed conversion to another religion, or to non-religion, sincere ...