All Articles: Cases

In Ribeli v Entry Clearance Officer, Pretoria [2018] EWCA Civ 611, the Court of Appeal reaffirmed the “rigorous and demanding” nature of the adult dependent relative rules, following the judgment in BRITCITS v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2017] EWCA Civ 368. Proving that you have an emotional and psychological...

24th April 2018
BY Sophie Caseley

When feeding my son, I sometimes have to heap the spoon up with something he likes to eat, to disguise something he does not. This is what the Home Office did when applying for permission to appeal in Secretary of State for the Home Department v Barry [2018] EWCA Civ...

23rd April 2018
BY Nick Nason

The Upper Tribunal has in AS (Safety of Kabul) Afghanistan CG [2018] UKUT 118 (IAC) given new country guidance in cases concerning removal to Kabul. The new guidance covers two main areas of concern. The first is the risk, on return to Kabul, from the Taliban. The second focuses on...

18th April 2018
BY Thomas Beamont

Nearly three years after the main appeal provisions of the Immigration Act 2014 commenced, the Upper Tribunal has turned its attention to the question lying at the heart of almost all appeals lodged since then: what is a human rights appeal anyway? There are two new cases which more or...

16th April 2018
BY Colin Yeo

In the wide-ranging and somewhat sorry case of El Gazzaz v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWCA Civ 532 the Court of Appeal has confirmed the strength of the presumption in favour of deporting foreign criminals. Page contentsCriminal convictions and mental ill-healthDeporting foreign criminals is in the public...

12th April 2018
BY Thomas Beamont

Lord Justices Hickinbottom, Kitchin and Coulson have delivered an interesting judgment concerning the free-standing balancing exercise of Article 8 ECHR in the context of a leave curtailment. The case is Tikka v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWCA Civ 632. The Court of Appeal found that the...

10th April 2018
BY Gabriella Bettiga

MK and Gega v R [2018] EWCA Crim 667 is about who should face the burden of proof when a criminal defendant relies on the new “victim of slavery/trafficking” defence in the Modern Slavery Act 2015. In the first appellate judgment on this issue, the Court of Appeal has ruled...

9th April 2018
BY Alex Schymyck

Secretary of State for the Home Department v Said [2018] EWCA Civ 627 is about how long the Home Office can delay making an immigration decision before the applicants can successfully claim for damages under the Human Rights Act 1998. The Home Office was appealing a decision from the High...

5th April 2018
BY Alex Schymyck

The judgment of the European Court of Human Rights in T.C.E. v Germany (application no. 58681/12) has a whiff of Groundhog Day. For the second time in just over six months the court found that a Nigerian national convicted of drug-related crimes could not prevent deportation by relying on his relationship with his...

3rd April 2018
BY Clare Duffy

In the recently reported case of Elsakhawy (immigration officers: PACE) [2018] UKUT 86 (IAC), the Upper Tribunal dismissed an appeal concerning the applicability of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act 1984 (PACE) to immigration officers exercising powers of “pastoral” interview. PACE is the law which safeguards the rights of those...

27th March 2018
BY Ruslan Kosarenko

In the recently published case of MT and ET (child’s best interests; ex tempore pilot) Nigeria [2018] UKUT 88 (IAC), the Upper Tribunal looked again at the balancing exercise between a child’s best interests and the public interest when deciding whether it is reasonable to expect a child to leave...

26th March 2018
BY Nath Gbikpi

Campaigners seeking to confirm whether the UK’s Article 50 notification triggering Brexit can be unilaterally revoked are one step closer to getting a decision from the Court of Justice of the European Union. Yesterday the Inner House of the Court of Session granted permission to proceed in Wightman and others v...

21st March 2018
BY iainh

Every few years another “good character” nationality case makes it to court. Usually they arise in the context of adults applying for naturalisation as British citizens at the Home Secretary’s discretion under section 6 of the British Nationality Act 1981, and invariably they concern criminal convictions (except for one, which I...

15th March 2018
BY John Vassiliou

On 1 March the Court of Appeal looked at Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights in the context of a Tier 1 (Entrepreneur) appeal. Although the appeal was dismissed, the court confirmed that running a business may amount to private life for the purposes of Article 8. The...

12th March 2018
BY Gabriella Bettiga

The case of AB, R (On the Application Of) v The Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWCA Civ 383 has unusual facts, but an unsurprising conclusion: the Home Office cannot grant asylum to someone who is not in the UK. The background is not really important but undoubtedly...

9th March 2018
BY Nath Gbikpi

The Court of Appeal in Tanvir Babar v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWCA Civ 329 dealt with the application of Immigration Rule 276B. The court highlighted the tensions between the Home Office policy, the application of the Immigration Rule and the weight that needs to be...

7th March 2018
BY Sairah Javed

At a time when immigration practitioners are facing a wave of referrals and allegations of misconduct, the Upper Tribunal’s decision in Shah (‘Cart’ judicial review: nature and consequences) [2018] UKUT 51 (IAC) comes as another timely reminder that judges are in no mood to deal with haphazard or slapdash appeals...

6th March 2018
BY Bilaal Shabbir

In JM (Zimbabwe), R (on the application of) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWCA Civ 188 the Court of Appeal grappled with an interesting point on the proper interpretation of paragraph 403(c) of the Immigration Rules. Paragraph 403 deals with the grant of leave to stateless people....

5th March 2018
BY Christopher Cole

The recent decision in R (SB (Afghanistan)) v SSHD [2018] EWCA Civ 215 concerned the removal of an Afghan asylum seeker last year. As the judgment records, the case generated a significant amount of media attention amid reports that it had taken place in breach of a High Court order, with...

26th February 2018
BY nicknason

The case of SM (Algeria) v Entry Clearance Officer [2018] UKSC 9 mainly revolved around the question of whether a child adopted abroad, where the adoption is not recognised by an EU member state, could be considered a “family member” under the EEA Regulations 2006. The Supreme Court has referred the case to...

15th February 2018
BY nathgbikpi

The Court of Appeal has held in PK (Ghana) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWCA Civ 98 that the criterion of “compelling personal circumstances” for a grant of limited leave as a trafficked person in the Secretary of State’s guidance failed properly to reflect Article 14(1)(a) of...

14th February 2018
BY Alison Harvey

Are there adequate procedures and protections for mentally ill migrants in detention centres who wish to challenge the lawfulness of their detention? No, said the Court of Appeal in R (VC) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWCA Civ 57. Detention centres have long been considered the “foreigner’s...

12th February 2018
BY Bilaal Shabbir

The Supreme Court yesterday held in the case of B (Algeria) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] UKSC 5 that the Home Office cannot impose bail conditions on a migrant who cannot be lawfully detained. Or, at least, the Home Office could not do so at the relevant...

9th February 2018
BY Colin Yeo

The Supreme Court has opened up British citizenship by double descent to all children born to British women in non-Commonwealth countries between 1949 and 1983. Delivering a judgment which makes no attempt to disguise his academic interests as a historian, Lord Sumption delivered a simple solution to a question of...

8th February 2018
BY John Vassiliou

The Court of Appeal last week issued “authoritative guidance” on Article 3 medical challenges against removal, reflecting the European Court of Human Rights’s decision in Paposhvili v Belgium. Lord Justice Sales, giving the court’s judgment in AM (Zimbabwe) & Anor v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWCA Civ 64,...

5th February 2018
BY Chai Patel

In many cases, employers who wish to hire Tier 2 skilled workers must pass the Resident Labour Market Test. This means that Tier 2 sponsors must offer a position to a settled worker ahead of a migrant where both candidates have the necessary skills and experience. Discrimination, but the acceptable...

2nd February 2018
BY Nick Nason

The web of Rules and Guidance has become so tangled that even the spider has difficulty controlling it. So says Lord Justice Underhill in Mudiyanselage v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWCA Civ 65, the latest decision in a long lineage examining the much maligned Points Based...

1st February 2018
BY Darren Stevenson

When an asylum seeker returns to an EU member state they’ve previously been transferred from under the Dublin III regulation, how should their application for international protection be processed? The Court of Justice of the European Union in C-160/16 Hasan has clarified a number of significant procedural points in the...

30th January 2018
BY Thomas Beamont

In R (RSM (A Child)) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWCA Civ 18 the Court of Appeal considered the ambit of Article 17 of the Dublin III regulation, the so-called “discretionary clause”, and found it to be narrow indeed. The challenge RSM, an unaccompanied child in...

26th January 2018
BY Alison Harvey

In today’s case of C‑473/16 F v Bevándorlási és Állampolgársági Hivatal, the Court of Justice of the European Union ruled that national authorities may not prepare and use psychologists’ expert reports to assess the sexual identity of an asylum seeker. I personally find the fact that this issue went to court quite...

25th January 2018
BY Nath Gbikpi

How can you win £266,536.14 in damages and walk away without a penny? If those who should pay succeed in divesting themselves of their assets and if the costs of litigation swallow up all that you do manage to recover. R (Tirkey) v The Director of Legal Aid Casework &...

10th January 2018
BY Alison Harvey

The Secretary of State’s decision to revoke an IT consultancy’s Tier 2 sponsor licence was upheld before Christmas in R (Sri Prathinik Consulting Limited) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2017] EWHC 3204 (Admin). A stream of case law was cited, most notably Lord Justice Tomlinson’s leading judgment...

3rd January 2018
BY Pip Hague

The legal arguments on family life between adult children and parents are notoriously tricky. The guise in which the issue arose in Pun & Anr (Nepal) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2017] EWCA Civ 2106 was whether non-dependent adult children could qualify under the Gurkha policy. The court...

21st December 2017
BY Bilaal Shabbir

Shittu v The Home Office [2017] EWCA Civ 1748 is a sad case which illustrates how difficult it is to bring legal challenges against the Home Office for using excessive force against migrants during the removal process. Civil claims against the Secretary of State in these circumstances turn on whether the...

19th December 2017
BY Alex Schymyck

Today’s decision in Anwar v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2017] EWCA Civ 2134 confirms that if the Home Office wishes to impose visa conditions, it must give people written notice of those conditions. If the Home Office fails to do this, or is unable to produce evidence that...

15th December 2017
BY Iain Halliday

In May this year, referring to the case of C-133/15 Chavez-Vilchez and Others v Netherlands, Colin wrote that the Court of Justice of the European Union has significantly extended Zambrano rights beyond those so far recognised by the Home Office and UK courts. The case undoubtedly represented a positive move — but the extent to which...

14th December 2017
BY Nath Gbikpi

In R (Decker) v Secretary of State for the Home Department & Anor [2017] EWCA Civ 1752, the Court of Appeal found that the Secretary of State must show her workings. She, and the immigration tribunals, must explicitly apply relevant tests set out in the EEA Regulations when making decisions. It is...

14th December 2017
BY Nath Gbikpi

The High Court has issued a helpful reminder to the Secretary of State that basic rules of procedural fairness continue to apply, even in the thorny context of removal windows and detention. In R (AT & Ors) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2017] EWHC 2714 (Admin), HHJ Walden-Smith...

13th December 2017
BY Chai Patel

Legislation meant to make life tougher for immigrant families accessing services may instead have brought some small relief. R (U and U) v Milton Keynes Council [2017] EWHC 3050 (Admin) was an application to judicially review Milton Keynes’ decision not to accommodate two Nigerian children, aged seven and eight. under section...

7th December 2017
BY John Murphy

The Court of Appeal has held in Ahsan v Secretary of State for the Home Department (Rev 1) [2017] EWCA Civ 2009 that people accused of cheating on the TOEIC English language test and threatened with removal from the UK have the right to challenge that decision in this country rather...

5th December 2017
BY CJ McKinney
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