The Home Affairs Committee of MPs today published its report on whether or not the Home Office has the capacity to deliver effective immigration services once the UK leaves the European Union next March. No, is the short answer. Not a lot of love from @CommonsHomeAffs Valentine's Day report on...
In the High Court last month, Mrs Justice Moulder found that the Home Office had gathered partly unreliable intelligence in the course of an investigation into a college, breaching its right to peaceful enjoyment of its Tier 4 sponsor licence under Article 1 Protocol 1 of the European Convention on...
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...
The High Court decided today that the Home Office’s policy of detaining and deporting rough sleepers from EU countries is unlawful. The case is R (Gureckis) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2017] EWHC 3298 (Admin), a judicial review challenge by three EEA nationals to their removal under the Immigration (European...
A Statement of Changes in Immigration Rules HC309 was laid yesterday, 7 December 2017. This note does not aim at detailing all the changes, instead just highlighting the most significant ones. Except where otherwise indicated, these changes will come into force on 11 January 2018, although applications made before 11...
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...
The current Prime Minister coined the term “hostile environment” when she was in charge at the Home Office. It is easy to forget that these measures, aimed at making life intolerable for immigrants without status, began during the last Labour government. Tabloid hysteria about hospitals and GP surgeries clogged up...
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―...
Last year the High Court in JM (Zimbabwe) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2016] EWHC 1773 (Admin) made a declaration that “the Defendant may not lawfully require the Claimant, under section 35 of the [Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants) Act 2004], to tell Zimbabwean officials that he...
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...
Sivayogam is a religious charity, serving Hindu and Tamil communities in London. Finding priests in the UK and Europe had proven difficult so, in 2009, it applied for registration as a Tier 2 sponsor, allowing the organisation to bring in religious workers from abroad. Its experience in R (Sivayogam) v...
Measures requiring banks to check on the immigration status of existing account holders come into force today. To celebrate, the Home Office has published some brief guidance for those who, as “disqualified persons”, find their current account locked or closed. It has also updated its guidance for the banks themselves....
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...
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...
Following a seven-day hearing in the High Court, Mr Felix Wamala, a Ugandan national, was awarded £48,000 in damages for the actions of private security guards contracted by the Home Office in seeking to remove him from the UK. This is the case of Wamala v Tascor Services Ltd [2017] EWHC...
The Independent Monitoring Board (IMB) has published its annual review of the treatment of returnees during charter flights. It reported four headline concerns: firstly, that force and restraint had been used without due checks and for too long; secondly, that escorts employed by contractors were in charge of selecting which...
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...
This post discusses issues arising for asylum practitioners from INTERPOL “wanted person” notices. The key points are (i) you can find out, possibly quite quickly, if there is such a notice in place, which in the affirmative may help to establish a risk of persecution; and (ii) if there is...
Operation Nexus was officially launched in November 2012, a law enforcement initiative aimed at deporting more ‘high harm’ foreign nationals. It has been criticised on many occasions for its opacity, and the lack of any publicly available policies which govern its implementation. See, for example, our previous post: Operation Nexus for...
In R (on the application of Iqbal) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2017] EWHC 79 (Admin) the Secretary of State for the Home Department (SSHD) was found to have unlawfully detained a claimant whom they had alleged had fraudulently obtained an Educational Test Service (ETS) certificate to show...
A new set of requirements for overstayers who apply for leave to enter or remain in the UK was introduced late last year. In short, the 28 day grace period for overstayers was abolished and replaced with a very limited 14 day limit, but only where a “good reason” was also...
‘Patient confidentiality is one of the most important pillars of medicine’, explains Dr Vivienne Nathanson, previously Head of Science and Ethics at the British Medical Association. Can patient information be shared without consent? The general principle is that patient information is confidential and can only be disclosed to third parties...
The Home Office has belatedly published the reports of the Independent Family Returns Panel for 2012 to 2014 and 2014 to 2016. Home Office responses have been published in parallel. Why the Home Office was withholding from publication for so long the 2012-14 report is something of a mystery. The panel is made...
The power under the Immigration Act 2016 to certify any human rights appeal, not just deportation appeals, for “remove first, appeal later” treatment came into force today, 1 December 2016. For background see this earlier blog post: New commencement order introduces out of country human rights appeals and more. Guidance...
At the beginning of this month the Home Office brought into force new guidance on the suspension of removal directions for pending judicial reviews. There are two crucial changes to the policy: (1) At present, when a judicial review is brought within 3 months of a previous judicial review or...
Really interesting from Migration Observatory on trends in immigration criminal and civil penalty enforcement. It came out a few weeks ago but it has taken me until now to look at it properly (there’s a LOT going on at the moment!). From the key points summary: From 1999 to 2016,...
The end of immigration appeals from within the UK is nigh: section 63 of the Immigration Act 2016 is being brought into force from 1 December 2016 by the Immigration Act 2016 (Commencement No. 2 and Transitional Provisions) Regulations 2016 (SI 2016/1037SI 2016/1037). The change introduces a power for the Home...
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”)...
The Home Office has imposed fines on small businesses for employing illegal workers of over £14 million in just a three month period. The period covered is January to March 2016. The list of businesses targeted by officials appears to include mainly small ethnic minority shops and takeaways. It is...
In the first successful challenge to prosecutions under s.35 of the Asylum and Immigration (Treatment of Claimants etc.) Act 2004, the Administrative Court in R (on the application of JM (Zimbabwe)) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2016] EWHC 1773 (Admin) held that the Home Office may not lawfully...
The Immigration Act 2016 was signed by Her Majesty the Queen on 12 May 2016. Some sections of the Act came into effect immediately but most sections were dependent on being brought into force by commencement orders at the discretion of the Minister. We have seen one commencement order so...
David Bolt, the Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration, recently published a new report into the effectiveness of services that the Home Office outsources to private contractors, finding that inefficiency and lack of communication contribute to a waste of resources and time. The full report is available here: An Inspection...
The “right to rent” scheme and legislation refers to a mysterious “permission to rent” which can be granted by the Secretary of State, presumably to those who do not otherwise possess the right to rent. Section 21(3) of the Immigration Act 2014 reads: But P is to be treated as...
UPDATE 10/2/16: the judge has withdrawn the judgment. A married Indian couple detained in a dawn raid have lost their claim for unlawful detention. After successfully studying in the UK for some years, Ms Joshi’s latest application ran into problems when the college to which she applied to study a PhD was...
The Government’s “right to rent” scheme requiring landlords to conduct “papers, please” checks on the immigration status of tenants comes into force today, 1 February 2016. It is hard to think of a worse example of a disproportionate policy, classically defined as a hammer being used to crack a nut. Who...
Well, this was a bit cheeky. A woman with an outstanding in-country immigration appeal was removed by the Home Office when she should not have been. The Home Office then argued that her appeal had to be treated as abandoned becuase of section 92(8) of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum...
The Court of Appeal has given judgment in the test case on the meaning and effect of the “deport first, appeal later” provisions of the Immigration Act 2014. The case is R (On the Application Of Kiarie) v The Secretary of State for the Home Department [2015] EWCA Civ 1020...
The Home Office today announced that all landlords in England and Wales will be forced to carry out “papers please” right to rent immigration checks on tenants from 1 February 2016. This is despite the Home Office’s own research, also published today, and independent research all finding that there was...
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...
The second reading of the Immigration Bill in the House of Commons is today. We have seen how even more appeals will be out of country under its regime, and the greater powers given to immigration officers under Part 3. Part 6 – including Schedules 7 and 8 – offers...
