Updates, commentary, training and advice on immigration and asylum law

Legacy update

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I’m back, after a prolonged absence and thoughts of ending it all etc etc. The blog, not me. I’m fine, thank you.

The news is that of the 6000 or so (roughly 6,800, apparently) families who were the first to receive Legacy questionnaires, most of them will be getting status and that the paperwork should be coming through early this month, in March. The powers-that-be have been telling NGOs and community groups via various stakeholder groups and the like (always makes me think of Buffy et al) that local authorities complained pretty damn quick when the first tranchStake holdere of status papers came through some months ago, which led the Home Office — ever conscious of the needs, wishes and feelings of immigrants and asylum seekers — to delay the whole caboodle. Local authorities were moaning because the recipients of status get kicked off Home Office support and become eligible for local authority support.

Being as most of the families would already have been on local authority support because they pretty much by definition included children, it sounds like a rubbish excuse to me. Hopefully we’ll see some action, now, though.

The delay only affected the first 6000 or so families, the ‘backlog clearance exercise’ has been ongoing for others, and I don’t have any news on the numbers granted status.

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The Free Movement blog was founded in 2007 by Colin Yeo, a barrister at Garden Court Chambers specialising in immigration law. The blog provides updates and commentary on immigration and asylum law by a variety of authors.

Comments

6 Responses

  1. delighted to have you back on the ether – now we can all find out what is really going on

  2. 19.000 people excluding dependents(18 dec 2007) have been granted leave to remain and I think that includes the 6000. There families I know that haven’t received a questionnaire and also no sign of leave to remain. The Home Office said that every families case will be decided until the end of march but I think they won’t be able to do that. They are too many that haven’t heard from the home office since a long time and are on asylum support for years.

    Do you have any information about that?

  3. Paul, thanks for that. Do you have a source for those numbers? 19,000 seems surprisingly high to me.

  4. http://www.theyworkforyou.com/wrans/?id=2008-01-23b.179102.h&s=case+resolution+directorate#g179102.r0

    The BIA says that there is no general amnesty
    and each claim will be decided on its merits.
    Since the start of the Case Resolution programme
    in July 2006, 52,000 cases have been resolved
    (with 19,000 cases granted leave to remain,
    17,000 discovered to be duplicate files or errors,
    and 16,000 cases removed from the UK).

    http://www.refugeecouncil.org.uk/NR/rdonlyres/72787ED2-4583-44B5-B4DB-8D16662915F4/0/RCONews_JanFeb2008.pdf

    These were figures from 18 December 2007 when the Home office made a statement to the commons and until now the figures must be much higher.

  5. Thanks once again, Paul. You know more about this than I do, I think, and I don’t have any insight or information to add. If I do hear more, I’ll do another post on the subject, though, and I’ll keep my eyes peeled in the meantime.