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 British government: All those who apply for settlement...
Welcome to the September 2018 edition of the Free Movement immigration update podcast. We tried something a bit different this month. CJ and I ran the podcast together in a more conversational style. To keep the length reasonable we’ve focussed in on fewer subjects but covered them in a bit...
Thakrar (Cart JR; Art 8: value to community) [2018] UKUT 336 (IAC) is a rare example of a case where permission to appeal to the Upper Tribunal was only granted by a High Court judge after a Cart judicial review of the Upper Tribunal. To put it another way, the Upper...
I’ve been working on a submission to the Windrush lessons learned review. The final date for submission of evidence is 19 October 2018 and I’d urge anyone interested in immigration policy to consider putting in a response, no matter how short. I’ll be sending in this submission, with any amendments,...
The whole purpose of the hostile environment is to exert indirect immigration control over migrants through employers, landlords, banks and public services. This is seen as an alternative to direct enforcement the old fashioned way, through arrests, detention and enforced removal. We saw in our post yesterday that direct enforcement...
“The government is cracking down harder on both illegal and legal migrants.” “The government does not control immigration.” These two contrasting statements are the prevailing yet paradoxical narratives on immigration in the United Kingdom today. An analysis of recent Home Office enforcement statistics suggests that neither offers an accurate picture...
Welcome to the August 2018 edition of the Free Movement immigration update podcast. This month I start on two subjects I’ve always been interested in, refusals of visit visa applications and the power to deprive people of their British citizenship. Both came to public attention in August due to media...
A British citizen can be deprived of his citizenship if he shows disloyalty to the state, the Court of Appeal has found in the case of Pham v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWCA Civ 2064. The case is interesting, thought-provoking and concerning in equal measure. Taking away...
An adult who is not a British citizen can apply to become one. This process is known as naturalisation. People will normally be eligible to apply for naturalisation under section 6 of the British Nationality Act 1981 if they meet certain requirements. These include residence requirements. The basic residence requirement is that...
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. As a result of blind adherence to strict rules and a deliberately narrow interpretation...