Scottish litigation would not be the same unless we had fancy words for everything. “Judge”? – too plain. We have “Lord Ordinary”. “Appeal”? Pah! We have the “reclaiming motion”. “Court of Appeal ...

Reading judgments from the Upper Tribunal on the EEA Regulations often feels like going back in time. A lot of the recent case law has clarified points of law in favour of migrants but almost all have come far too late to be useful. The latest case of ...

Chucking people out of a country they were born in is hard. It usually takes something pretty dramatic or pretty terrible — or both, as in the case of Azerkane v The Netherlands (application no. 3138/16). The facts Mr Azerkane was born in the Ne ...

“Devani” in my native language of Punjabi/Urdu roughly translates as “crazy” or “mad”. An apt name for the case of Devani [2020] EWCA Civ 612, because it’s never promising when a judgment starts by saying “this appeal has a complic ...

A quick note on this Advocate General’s Opinion fresh from Luxembourg on the Qualification Directive. The case is C‑255/19 Secretary of State for the Home Department v OA. The Qualification Directive sets out the criteria for determining asylum cl ...

Tribunals that decide whether someone is entitled to benefits often have to grapple with our nightmarish immigration law. HK v SSWP (PC) [2020] UKUT 73 (AAC) is one such case from the Administrative Appeals Chamber. It effectively confirms that a Brit ...

Two important (but completely different) points arise from the Upper Tribunal’s decision in MH (review; slip rule; church witnesses) Iran [2020] UKUT 125 (IAC), one concerning religious conversion cases and the other concerning clerical errors in a ...

The Court of Appeal’s judgment in Hussein v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2020] EWCA Civ 156 is another reminder of the multiple layers of protection from deportation which EU citizens enjoy. In particular, it focuses on the importance ...

The Detained Fast Track appeal system was found to be inherently unfair in Lord Chancellor v Detention Action [2015] EWCA Civ 840. But the impact of this bombshell decision was, over time, mitigated by two factors. Firstly, those who had appeals dism ...

In Odubajo v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2020] CSOH 2, the Court of Session has ruled that the three-month time limit for raising judicial review proceedings starts on the date of the decision, even though the person affected may not h ...

The Upper Tribunal clearly has a tough time getting into the holiday spirit. Ejiogu (Cart cases) [2019] UKUT 395 (IAC), reported just before Christmas, is the equivalent of a judicial smack on the hand. It is another reminder of the importance of wha ...

Following on from the Court of Appeal’s recent human rights “cheatsheet” in GM (Sri Lanka) v Secretary of State for the Home Department, we now have a gem of a sequel that is Lal v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWCA Civ 1925. ...

A grant of refugee status usually involves acceptance that a particular set of circumstances exist which would make it unlawful for a person to be returned to their country of origin. But circumstances change, and this can have a knock-on effect on wh ...

In DM (Tanzania) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWHC 2351 (Admin), the High Court ruled that the lack of accommodation for foreign national offenders cannot be a defence in a claim for unlawful detention. The case involved DM’s ...

You walk into court, lever arch folders tucked safely under each arm. You’ve tried to be organised and posted copies of your bundles weeks in advance. You’re part way through your submissions, furiously referring to this, that and the other whilst ...

The Court of Appeal has held that the UK government can be asked to pay expenses where a judicial review has been brought against the Upper Tribunal’s refusal to grant permission to appeal. The test case of Faqiri v Upper Tribunal (Immigration and A ...

The Home Office has updated its main guidance on family visas under Appendix FM of the Immigration Rules. The good news is now we have one consolidated guidance document dealing with both the five and ten-year routes for partners, parents and private ...

Always a worry (but never a surprise) when Court of Appeal judges start off a judgment by saying that the case “has a tortuous procedural history”, is “highly technical” and involves “Byzantine… provisions” of immigration law. Firdaws v ...

The Court of Appeal has handed down guidance on “limbo” cases in RA (Iraq) v The Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWCA Civ 850. These are cases where a migrant cannot be removed from the UK because, for example, conditions in thei ...

An adult primary carer of an British citizen can acquire a derivative right to reside under EU law, the Court of Appeal has said in MS (Malaysia) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWCA Civ 580. On the facts, it is surprising that the ...

Immigration judges who get things wrong tend not to be named, unless of course you are Dr Majid. All the more surprising, then, that the Court of Appeal sought to name (and, frankly, shame) Judge Anthony Thornton QC in R (Hameed) v Secretary of State ...

The Court of Justice of the European Union has today handed down judgment in the case of C-163/17 Jawo. The court held that asylum seekers cannot be sent back even to a fellow EU member state if they are at substantial risk of inhuman or degrading tre ...

The Court of Appeal has rejected a challenge that the time limit for bringing an administrative review only starts when a decision is physically received by an applicant. The appellant in R (Hasan) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [20 ...

The President of the Upper Tribunal’s decision in OA and others (human rights; ‘new matter’; s.120) Nigeria [2019] UKUT 65 (IAC) has added another layer of complexity to an already biased and convoluted system. Readers are probably au fa ...

The upshot of the Upper Tribunal’s decision in AK and IK (S.85 NIAA 2002 – new matters) Turkey [2019] UKUT 67 (IAC) is that a person who relies upon a different category of the Immigration Rules to succeed under Article 8 at their appeal or in a s ...

The controversial story of British teenager Shamima Begum has dominated the news in recent days. Shamima left the UK in February 2015 to travel to Syria at the age of 15. She was very recently found in a Syrian refugee camp, heavily pregnant, after sh ...

Under EU law it is not necessary that a person be working in a member state in order to be entitled to family benefits in respect of his children living in another member state. So ruled the Court of Justice of the European Union in C-322/17 Bogatu ...

Since January 2015, 1,700 settlement applications from Tier 1 (General) migrants have been refused under paragraph 322(5) of the Immigration Rules, primarily due to discrepancies between earnings declared to HMRC and to the Home Office at the time of ...

The ETS saga continues and the latest edition is the Court of Appeal’s judgment in Rahman v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWCA Civ 1572. (Editor’s note: we may have been a tad premature in declaring that “The ETS Engl ...

In Oksuzoglu (EEA appeal – “new matter”) [2018] UKUT 00385 (IAC), the appellant was a Ukrainian national and the sponsor was a British national. They had spent some seven months in Cyprus and on their return to the UK, the appellant appl ...

Invalid applications: in recent years, this has become one of the trickiest and dense parts of our immigration law. It’s one of my favourite areas because it’s so interesting and technical (as those of you who attended the Immigration Law Mastercl ...

In a robust judgment yesterday, the High Court found the decision of the Home Office to cut weekly benefits to asylum-seeking victims of trafficking was unlawful. The rate was previously set at £65 per week and was dramatically cut by 42% from 1 Ma ...

The High Court’s recent decision in R (Shafikul Islam) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWHC 2939 (Admin) is yet another case on the vexed issue of whether appeals against refusals of EEA residence cards are suspensive of removal ...

It is one thing when the state seeks to withdraw a permission or privilege. It is a very different matter when it seeks to interfere with an individual’s rights. Privileges are precarious. In the absence of good reason to the contrary, rights should ...

If there is one piece of advice practitioners take away from this post, let it be this: in ANY application you prepare, take the time and the effort to fully explain and particularise your client’s circumstances in your letter of representations. In ...

Today the Court of Justice of the European Union handed down a decision in the case of C-647/16 Adil Hassan v Prefet du Pas-de-Calais concerning the Dublin III Regulation. The press summary is here. Practitioners will be well aware how intricate and ...

The Court of Appeal’s decision in Parveen v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] EWCA Civ 932 seems to be an additional nail in the coffin for the once renowned (and now shut down) Malik Law Chambers, with the court repeatedly criticisi ...

Fresh out of the Court of Justice of the European Union is the interesting case of C-82/16 K.A. & Others v Belgium. A significant part of the decision deals with the 2008 Returns Directive, which does not apply to the UK. The remainder of the co ...

Judge Clements, President of the First-tier Tribunal (IAC), yesterday released comprehensive new guidance on immigration bail for judges. The updated guidance naturally takes into account the significant changes brought about by the Immigration Act 20 ...

In SA v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2018] CSIH 28, the Inner House considered an appeal from the Upper Tribunal concerning a deportation order against a Romanian national. The two main issues were: the burden of proof in EEA deportatio ...