As well as formally lowering the spouse visa age back to 18 through a formal change to the Immigration Rules on 28 November 2011 in response to the Quila case, the UK Border Agency is enabling the review of cases where applications were refused solely ...

My old pupil master, Ian Lewis, helpfully reminded me the other day that the deadline for the Human Rights Commission is approaching: 11 November 2011. With Remembrance Day and International Corduroy Day, 11/11/11 is going to be busy. The discussion p ...

UPDATE: see later post for information on applying for a review if your case has already been refused. The Government has announced today that the spouse visa age will be lowered again from 21 to 18. The change will take effect as of 28 November 2011. ...

Back on 6 April 2011 the UK Border Agency made a change to the settlement rules for work permit holders who had entered the UK before the Points Based System was introduced. The change required a work permit holder to be paid a certain salary in order ...

Regular readers will know that Free Movement practises from Renaissance Chambers, as do the other contributors to the blog. We have been expanding our immigration team at Renaissance over the last few months and have now also relaunched our website. L ...

In a judgment handed down yesterday HH Judge Anthony Thornton QC has given some very interesting guidance on the scope of the duty under section 55 of the Borders, Citizenship and Immigration Act 2009 following the guidance of the Supreme Court in the ...

The Upper Tribunal has reported a decision on the effect of the new section 85A of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002: Alam (s 85A – commencement – Article 8) Bangladesh [2011] UKUT 00424 (IAC). The official headnote reads as follows ...

The UK Border Agency has released the slightly more detailed guidance on Zambrano-based applications that was referred to in my earlier post on this. This follows from a Freedom of Information request, although in fact the document had already been pr ...

UPDATE: SEE LATEST POST. Following a hell of a lot of confused, confusing and anguished comments on my last post on Quila, I thought it might be helpful to set out my take on the effect of Quila. The first thing to say is that I would be very wary of ...

Theresa May and David Cameron have promised to crack down on the perversion of human rights. May specifically stated that she wanted to amend the Immigration Rules to do so. Some of this is no doubt pure politics of the dogwhistle variety: it will not ...

UPDATE: SEE LATEST POST. In a judgment just handed down the Supreme Court has by a majority dismissed the Home Secretary’s appeal against the Court of Appeal’s ruling in the case of Quila v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2011] ...

In the case of R (on the application of Sino) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2011] EWHC 2249 (Admin) (25 August 2011) John Howell QC, sitting as a deputy judge of the High Court, held that the entire period of detention of an Algerian m ...

Prime Minister David Cameron has made yet another keynote speech on immigration. He seems hell bent on setting back race relations in this country by forty years. Encouraging members of the public to rat on suspected illegal immigrant neighbours or wo ...

I have so far refrained from any mention of cats, although I came THIS close to asking in examination in chief yesterday whether my clients owned a cat… You can read the disputed determination for yourself here, courtesy of The New Statesman. Yo ...

I’ve previously posted up the publicly available UKBA guidance on Zambrano, but a commenter very helpfully posted a link to more information available on the Wornham & Co blog. I don’t myself post letters to or from ILPA unless the inf ...

After what felt like something of a hiatus early in the year, the tribunal has been churning out new reported cases in recent months as if there was no tomorrow. As far as I know no-one has suggested scrapping the Immigration and Asylum Chamber YET, a ...

Damian Green’s speech on immigration on 15 September 2011 revealed various proposals which seem likely to become law. These build and elucidate on previous proposals, previously covered here on the blog. The tone of the speech and the proposals ...

The first of my catch-up posts comes courtesy of the indefatigable Mr T – many thanks, Mr T. The UK Border Agency have issued some belated guidance on the Zambrano case. It only appears in the form of an item on the news section of the UKBA webs ...

Passing through immigration control on my return to the UK yesterday, my wife had to restrain me from taking a photograph of one of the notices that appeared on the UK visual displays at Heathrow. She wanted to get home sooner rather than later and, o ...

I’m off on holiday and am delighted to say that I won’t be back for three weeks. I’d hoped to set a couple of posts to pop up automatically while I’m away but I’ve been too busy packing. See you in a few weeks. ...

I’m a bit behind on tribunal determination updates, but here’s the latest batch of diktats reported cases. The first is interesting, the others somewhat less so, in that they do not seem to have a great deal of broader application. The r ...

The Home Office have published a new piece of research they commissioned, entitled Marriage-related migration to the UK, by Katharine Charsley, Nicholas Van Hear, Michaela Benson and Brooke Storer-Church. It makes very interesting reading for anyone i ...

Free Movement has just hit one MILLION, er, hits. As with Dr Evil, that isn’t actually a lot of hits in today’s world, but for a small, specialist legal blog it isn’t bad going. Time for some reminiscing… The first post was on ...

The Immigration Law Practitioners Association (ILPA) have substantially re-vamped their website. It is a huge improvement on the old one. The public-facing site is basically the same as the old one but looks better and more modern. A new facility for ...

In his speech on Monday addressing the long term causes behind the recent looting, David Cameron blamed the State. The communities that erupted need less help, not more, it would seem. In some classic post-Blair, verb-free rhetoric, Cameron recited so ...

Mark Symes has posted an article over at the HJT Immigration Blog on a new case from the Court of Appeal on the ‘second appeal criteria’. The case is PR (Sri Lanka) & Ors v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2011] EWCA Civ 988 ...

It turns out that the muppets* at the Ministry of Justice have laid regulations that at first glance appear to forbid English and Welsh barristers and solicitors from appearing in the immigration tribunal in Scotland and Northern Ireland but which per ...

It is now possible to claim CPD (Continuing Professional Development) points through the blog, in conjunction with HJT Training. The poll a couple of weeks ago suggested that there is a reasonable level of interest in this, so we’ve put togethe ...

I have started to think about the Herculean (perhaps Sisyphean a better analogy? – ed.) task of updating the HJT Immigration Manual, something I do at least once per year. This year there is a LOT to change, and I’m not looking forward to ...

The Chief Inspector of UKBA, John Vine, two weeks ago released a new report on the use of country information by the UK Border Agency in asylum claims. I’ve been too busy to finish writing about it, unfortunately, and am still catching up on va ...

The Court of Appeal has given judgment in an extremely important new case on costs, R (on the application of Bahta & Ors) v Secretary of State for the Home Department & Ors [2011] EWCA Civ 895 (26 July 2011). It specifically concerns the UK Bo ...

The UK Border Agency can be very generous and understanding when it wants to be. For some reason, Libyans currently in the UK whose visas are running out are being told that they don’t need to meet the rules required for an extension, they don&# ...

The Exceptional Talent route attracted a lot of attention and comment when it was announced way back in November 2010. Questions were starting to be asked about what had happened to it and whether arts and science organisations were really willing to ...

Another series of edictsreported cases has been handed down by the Upper Tribunal. Official headnotes and links to the BAILII judgments are included below. I’ve also thrown in another couple of cases that slipped out since the last big batch. We ...

Amnesty International have put together a training video for potential recruits to the private security firms contracted to carry out forced removals. It is well worth a watch. [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vldHz2ZJoxY&w=560&h=349] T ...

The Government yesterday launched another consultation on restricting immigration, this time family immigration. The splash on the UKBA website is here, the Ministerial statement here, the consultation document here and the accompanying research pape ...

Free Movement is planning to launch a scheme to allow regular readers who are barristers, solicitors or OISC advisers to claim some CPD hours by reading the blog and then answering multiple choice questions. This would be done in conjunction with HJT ...

The minister with responsibility for legal aid, Jonathan Djanogly MP, has made a statement (reproduced below) on the Immigration Advisory Service going into administration. Once again, the emphasis is on transfer of files to new providers rather than ...

Some or all of the staff at the IAS Bristol office have put together a press release and made a bid for independence. The text is reproduced below. This follows from a mysterious comment signed off only as ‘IAS’ left on the original Law S ...

Following the terrible news about the Immigration Advisory Service going into administration, their website has finally been updated with information for clients. The full text is reproduced below in case it changes or is taken down (complete with th ...