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. This is part of the campaign mentioned previously. Details on the Amnesty ...

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 ...

Rumours have been circulating over the weekend but the Legal Services Commission has now confirmed [UPDATES: see also BBC news story, Law Society Gazette story and comments and follow-up, Guardian story and subsequent FM post] that IAS, the larg ...

Amnesty International has launched a campaign to change the way that the UK Border Agency conducts forced removals. The practices used by the private security contractors who do the dirty work for the Border Agency was highlighted earlier this year by ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...