HM Inspectorate of Prisons yesterday published two reports based on unannounced inspections of the short term immigration holding facilities at Heathrow Terminals 3 and 4 (Terminal 3 report here and Terminal 4 report here). The reports are broadly pos ...

The previously mentioned Migration Museum Project ‘100 Images of Migration‘ competition deadline has been extended to 15 July 2011. I have been given permission to use the image to the side as an example of one of the entries. A woman born ...

The legal luggage carousel of the tribunal’s reporting committee has deposited a large batch of new cases in the arrivals hall of BAILII. Some of these cases are interesting, others perhaps a little less so. The more interesting include a couple ...

Last week, while I was away, the Supreme Court held that the Upper Tribunal can be judicially reviewed, and in much wider circumstances than envisaged previously by the High Court and the Court of Appeal. For England and Wales the case is Cart and MR ...

The cases of Sufi and Elmi v UK (Applications nos. 8319/07 and 11449/07) have been allowed by the European Court of Human Rights. This is a major judgment on return to Somalia and the conditions there. The press release can be found here and the judg ...

BAILII, the invaluable resource which provides much of the material for this blog, is under threat of closure. It seems that the Ministry of Justice has withdrawn funding, and BAILII are seeking replacement commitments from solicitors firms and barris ...

[UPDATE: SEE HERE FOR OUTCOME OF CASE] Tune in to Supreme Court Live! on the web for live coverage provided by Sky News of the hearing in the Quila case in the Supreme Court. It kicks off at 10.30am this morning, 8 June 2011. This link takes you to th ...

Last weekend I finally read the Refugee Council report Lives in the Balance: The quality of immigration legal advice given to separated children seeking asylum. It is a short, sharp, very depressing but absolutely essential read for any solicitors, O ...

Not much to report on this one, just that I tried a Freedom of Information request on the criteria for deciding Legacy cases and get a non-answer back in return. The request was refused to begin with but that decision was overturned on appeal. The inf ...

In an earlier post I highlighted the new Ministerial Authorisation permitting race discrimination by immigration officials. This followed on from the exposure of discrimination against Pakistanis purely on the basis of their nationality by the Chief I ...

The Supreme Court yesterday handed down judgment in the case of Shepherd Masimba Kambadzi v SSHD [2011] UKSC 23, in the Court of Appeal known as SK (Zimbabwe) v SSHD [2008] EWCA Civ 1204. For reference, the original High Court judgment by Mr Justi ...

Quick plug for a new publication from the Immigration Law Practitioners Association, to which I contributed a chapter. It is called Working with Refugee Children: Current Issues in Best Practice and can be downloaded for free from the ILPA website or ...

My post on Friday about the Amos case may have been a little o’er hasty. The excellent Manjit Gill QC, who was Leading Counsel for the claimant in Amos, has sent in a correction by email, the relevant part of which is as below (reproduced with k ...

Quick heads up for an interesting post by Mark Symes on the HJT Training blog. In the recent case of Amos v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2011] EWCA Civ 552 (12 May 2011) the Court of Appeal rejected the argument that there is a shared b ...

I’m full of good news today! The rumours were true and section 19 of the UK Borders Act 2007 is being brought into force as of 23 May 2011. It makes most Points Based System appeals, er, pointless. There’s a news item on the UKBA website a ...

It looks like the 14 year rule may be for the chop. See this question and answer from Prime Ministers Questions yesterday: Mr Hollobone: … Under rules introduced in 2003, illegal migrants who manage to avoid the authorities for 14 years can app ...

The Ministry of Justice has confirmed that fees will be charged for lodging appeals in the immigration tribunal from October 2011. There is no summary and the important details are spread out all over the place, meaning the document requires careful a ...

I’m currently working on materials for a general immigration update course for HJT Training, taking place this Wednesday, 18th May. Click here to book if you are interested. As well as things I’ve already covered here on Free Movement I ...

Ever since the mysterious disappearance of the IAA Gender Guidelines from the old IAA website, there has been an absence of good guidance to immigration judges on gender issues in an immigration context. The Equal Treatment Benchbook has a very good c ...

On Tuesday I speculated on whether section 19 of the UK Borders Act 2007 might be brought into force. This was entirely speculative at the time, but today I’ve heard rumours that this is indeed what is going to happen, and soon. However, I can f ...

The Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture (shortly to become Freedom From Torture, is launching a very interesting sounding new report entitled Body of evidence: treatment of medico-legal reports for survivors of torture in the UK asyl ...

It looks like family visit appeals may be axed. Again. Those who have been doing this a while will no doubt be afflicted by a terrible sense of deja vu at this point, as this is not the first time this has happened. The news seems to have broken via T ...

I’ve been asked to give a mention to the Migration Museum Project and am delighted to do so. I enjoyed my visit to the Museum of Immigration in Melbourne and the 19 Princelet Street project in Spitalfields is excellent but can necessarily only o ...

A very good solicitor I know nearly came a cropper on this the other day, so I thought I would post up some advice on the subject. I suspect quite a few immigration lawyers are not really familiar with the issues around disclosure. Given the increasin ...

The recent scrapping of the old AIT website has rendered my old page of links to procedure rules and practice directions out of date. I found it useful myself, so here are a replacement list of useful links sourced from the new Ministry of Justice, Ju ...

Last week was the annual Renaissance Chambers immigration lecture, and I promised to post up the notes and slides from the talks. It has been such a busy week that I haven’t even had time to accomplish that, for which I apologise. We all thought ...

The full text of the speech (yet to be delivered at the time of writing, which seems rather odd) is available on The Guardian website and elsewhere. I want to concentrate on what future changes are being signalled in the speech. Before getting started ...

The Court of Appeal shows its despair at the immigration tribunal in the case of RM (Zimbabwe) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2011] EWCA Civ 428 (13 April 2011). All three judges lament the fact that they have to remit the case back to ...

In a clear signal of a return to Victorian values of the undeserving poor and salvation through faith, the Home Office is terminating its funding for the fabulous Poppy Project for trafficked women and instead awarding a contract to the Salvation Army ...

It had escaped my attention that Free Movement was four years old on 7 March 2011. The first ever post was published on that day, entitled Overstayers and illegal entrants. The Home Secretary was Dr Reid. How long ago that all feels! Since then 365 po ...

I have had to redraft this post, which had been intended to be a good news story about a positive development at the UK Border Agency and which I had scheduled for Monday morning. A nice start to the week, thought I. However, late last week it transpi ...

Only this morning I was making extensive use of the websites of both the First Tier and Upper Tribunal Immigration and Asylum Chambers. I’ve returned to chambers only to find that they have now seemingly vanished into thin air, with nothing but ...

A raft of cases has come out in the last week or so, so it is high time for a round up. I’ll start with two cases from the Court of Appeal followed by the headnotes from a series of mundane tribunal determinations. One wonders why some of these ...

In the case of Lumba v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2011] UKSC 12 the Supreme Court has held that it was unlawful to detain foreign prisoners under a secret policy which was the precise reverse of the publicly declared policy. However, ...

The Government would like students to come to the UK, pay their overseas tuition fees (and a few immigration fees along the way) and then, as the great Meatloaf would put it, be gone when the morning comes. Despite the general reputation of students f ...

[UPDATE 31/3/11: see Comments below for further information and updates] This interesting snippet of information recently came my way and I thought it was worth sharing. A Freedom of Information request recently revealed outcomes to the Legacy backlog ...

Permission has been granted to the Secretary of State to appeal to the Supreme Court against the judgment of the Court of Appeal in the case of Quila & Anor v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2010] EWCA Civ 1482, concerning the increase ...

Firstly, I should apologise for getting behind with my updates. I have nominally been on holiday this last week and my internet connection, perhaps fortuitously for my holiday, died unexpectedly half way through. Briefly, we have seen a major judgment ...

The Chief Inspector of UKBA has today published critical reports of the entry clearance operations at Amman in Jordan and Istanbul in Turkey. Click here for press release, here for the report on Amman and here for the report on Istanbul. In Amman, 55% ...

The Government has announced a new ‘red carpet’ approach to immigration for the super rich: From April 6, investors who come to the UK and invest £5m will be allowed to settle here after three years and those that invest £10m or more wil ...