Author: Mark Symes

Mark Symes

Mark Symes

Mark is a barrister at Garden Court Chambers with twenty years of casework experience, he is co-author of the "encyclopaedic... pre-eminent" Asylum Law and Practice and is enthusiastic about all areas of all immigration law, from human rights to commercial cases. Mark is rated as a "real expert" and as "dynamic and brilliant" by Chambers UK 2014.

Professor Hathaway’s original Law of Refugee Status has near mythical status in the lexicon of asylum lawyers. Published as it was in 1991, it was one of the first texts in the field, emanating from a time when English refugee law comprised largely basic propositions about the standard of proof,...

10th June 2015
BY Mark Symes

In Tarakhel v Switzerland [2014] ECHR 1185 (04 November 2014) the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (“ECtHR”) has issued its long-awaited decision as to the lawfulness of returning asylum seekers to Italy, a subject that has engaged the refugee lawyers of Europe for some years. The ECtHR rules that individualised enquiries...

13th November 2014
BY Mark Symes

From 28 July 2014, the commencement of provisions of the Immigration Act 2014 gives the Secretary of State new powers of certification that will oust “in-country” rights of appeal for foreign criminals. She may do so in any case where she thinks removal would be consistent with the Human Rights...

21st August 2014
BY Mark Symes

There can be few immigration practitioners who do not presently encounter decisions in relation to applications made on the basis of peoples’ private and family life which do not carry the right of appeal. In recent years the prevailing tendency has become to segregate decisions, where the applicant is an...

2nd June 2014
BY Mark Symes

Any asylum practitioner is likely to come across cases where, rather than investigate the merits of an asylum claim, the Home Office seeks to return their client to a third country elsewhere in the European Union deemed under the Dublin II Regulation to have prior responsibility for assessing the claim,...

19th February 2014
BY Mark Symes

Largely unnoticed by many, on 1 January 2014 a new legal regime entered force regarding the allocation of responsibility for considering asylum claims from persons who have entered the country from elsewhere in the European Union: Regulation (EU) No 604/2013 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 26 June...

16th January 2014
BY Mark Symes
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