In recent years the Court of Appeal (Criminal Division) has displayed a willingness to allow late appeals and quash historic convictions to address injustice against victims of human trafficking. This includes using the common law to protect the rights of trafficking victims convicted of immigration offences before the statutory defence...
Shamima Begum is a citizen of Bangladesh and so would not be made stateless by being stripped of her British citizenship, the Special Immigration Appeals Commission has held. The main SIAC judgment is Shamima Begum (Preliminary Issue : Substansive) [2020] UKSIAC SC_163_2019, while there is also a brief High Court...
The case of MM v NA (Declaration as to Marital Status) [2020] EWHC 93 (Fam) is very (very!) niche, but may be of interest to practitioners with clients who got married in Somaliland and wish to rely on that marriage for immigration purposes. Spoiler: that marriage is likely to be...
MSU (S.104(4b) notices) Bangladesh [2019] UKUT 412 (IAC) considers section 104 of the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 (as heavily amended), which says that an appeal shall be treated as abandoned if the appellant is granted leave to enter or remain. For many appellants section 104 won’t be a...
In Case C-32/19 AT v Pensionsversicherungsanstalt the Court of Justice of the European Union was asked to review Article 17(1)(a) of the Citizens’ Rights Directive. This provides an exception to the usual requirement of five years’ continuous residence before EU migrants are entitled to permanent residence in the country they have...
The Court of Appeal has given judgment in R (AC (Algeria)) v SSHD [2020] EWCA Civ 36. The case is about “grace periods” in unlawful detention claims. A grace period, as described by Lord Justice Irwin in his judgment, is that period of time allowed to the Secretary of State,...
Following another paragraph 322(5) case, where an applicant was refused indefinite leave to remain on the basis of dishonesty for disclosing different income to HMRC as opposed to the Home Office, the Upper Tribunal has issued guidance on evidence from accountants purporting to take the blame for those tax discrepancies....
The headnote of Rana (s. 85A; Educational Loans Scheme) Bangladesh [2019] UKUT 396 (IAC) deals with two matters: 1. There was nothing in s 85A of the 2002 Act preventing the Secretary of State from adducing evidence. 2. The requirement to show that a loan was “part of an Academic...
Prior to the closure of the Tier 1 (Entrepreneur) route, the main requirement was evidence that an applicant had access to funds for investment in their proposed venture. The Immigration Rules permitted applicants to rely on their own funds, or alternatively on funds that have recently been transferred to them...
AXB (Art 3 health: obligations; suicide) Jamaica [2019] UKUT 397 (IAC) is the latest in a series of cases which have tried to transpose the decision of Paposhvili v Belgium (application no. 41738/10) into domestic law. Paposhvili was an unusual case in which the applicant had died before the European Court...
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 have been notified of that decision. This...
In SB (vulnerable adult: credibility) Ghana [2019] UKUT 398 (IAC) the Upper Tribunal has provided a steer on how immigration judges should approach evidence given by vulnerable adults, in addition to that provided in the Joint Presidential Guidance Note No 2 of 2010. The key point is that adverse credibility...
On 20 December 2019, the Upper Tribunal issued a new country guidance case on Iraq. This new case, SMO, KSP & IM (Article 15(c); identity documents) Iraq CG [2019] UKUT 400 (IAC), replaces all existing country guidance, including AA (Article 15(c)) Iraq CG [2015] UKUT 544 (IAC); BA (Returns to...
The High Court has refused to extend key safeguards under the Adults at Risk policy to immigration detainees held in prisons. In MR (Pakistan) & Anor v Secretary of State for Justice & Ors [2019] EWHC 3567 (Admin), Mr Justice Supperstone decided that healthcare protections for vulnerable detainees on the...
Can an appeal be both finally determined and pending at the same time? This conundrum, akin to Erwin Schrödinger’s famous thought experiment involving a cat in a box with a lethal substance, was tackled by the Upper Tribunal in Niaz (NIAA 2002 s. 104: pending appeal) [2019] UKUT 399 (IAC)....
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 what the tribunal describes as the “duty of candidness”,...
The impact of disclosing information from family proceedings in immigration matters has been in the news of late but the reverse situation rarely arises. One such is the recent case of R v Secretary of State for the Home Department (Disclosure of Asylum Records) [2019] EWHC 3147 (Fam), which explored the...
The Upper Tribunal has confirmed that it is for asylum seekers to disprove the possibility of safe and reasonable internal relocation if the Home Office identifies a potential safe haven. In MB (Internal relocation – burden of proof) Albania [2019] UKUT 392 (IAC), the Upper Tribunal reconsidered the earlier decision...
In recent years the United Kingdom government has resorted to indirect measures like the hostile environment to force people to leave the UK, alongside directly removing people. The government can then claim that the person left the UK voluntarily, and may have thought that there could be no liability for...
The High Court has ruled that charging a citizenship fee of over £1,000 to children is unlawful. The decision will be widely welcomed by campaigners who have long argued that the fee charged to register a child as British, which is set far above the administrative cost of processing applications,...
The Upper Tribunal has shot down a scheme under which people looking for a Tier 1 (Investor) visa would borrow money from one company and invest in a closely related company. In a judicial review against the Home Office for refusing the Tier 1 (Investor) applications of two Chinese citizens...
In all likelihood, the events of last Thursday mean the UK will be exiting the EU on 31 January 2020 with a deal. This means EU law will remain in place during a transitional period at least until 31 December 2020. After this date, either the transitional period is extended...
The Supreme Court has found in the case of Patel and Shah v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] UKSC 59 that the carers of EU citizen children can derive a Zambrano right of residence only where the child will as a practical matter of fact be forced to...
The Court of Appeal has given judgment in Akinyemi v SSHD (No 2) [2019] EWCA Civ 2098, a long-running appeal concerning the deportation of a man who was born in the UK in 1983, and has never left. In reversing (again) the decision of the Upper Tribunal to dismiss Mr...
The High Court has declared that the Home Office policy of waiting until an asylum decision is made before considering whether to grant trafficking victims Discretionary Leave to Remain is unlawful. Under that policy, a recognised victim of human trafficking who has claimed asylum might wait months or years for...
In the case of R (Karagul & Ors) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] EWHC 3208 (Admin), the High Court has found that the Home Office breached the principle of procedural fairness when refusing applications under the Ankara Agreement on the basis of bad faith or dishonesty....
On a warm summer’s day in late July, five sets of appellant lawyers found themselves in Court 4 of the Upper Tribunal in Field House, huddled together on what could only be characterised as “the naughty step”. Unaware at the start of the day the rationale for the hearings before...
Article 2(n) of the Dublin III regulation provides: Member States shall not hold a person in detention for the sole reason that he or she is subject to the procedure established by this Regulation. When there is a significant risk of absconding, Member States may detain the person concerned in...
For those lawyers, like my Lord and myself, who have spent many years practising in the family jurisdiction, this is not a comfortable interpretation to apply. But that is what Parliament has decided… So held Lord Justice Baker, giving judgment in SSHD v KF (Nigeria) [2019] EWCA Civ 2051, and...
An asylum appeal by an Eritrean woman, initially rejected by an immigration judge, has been overturned by the Upper Tribunal after it emerged the court interpreter embarked on a political rant to the woman’s barrister at the bus stop outside court afterwards. The case is TS (interpreters) Eritrea [2019] UKUT...
There’s been a lot written on this blog recently about overstaying. Why do we keep banging on about it, you may ask? Because even a short period of technical overstaying, even if entirely innocent and endorsed by the Home Office, can cause problems for future applications. This was demonstrated recently...
The Court of Appeal has given judgment in CI (Nigeria) v SSHD [2019] EWCA Civ 2027, providing further guidance on the law relating to the deportation of foreign criminals, and in particular on the meaning in section 117C(4) of the Nationality Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 of “lawful residence”, “social...
The Supreme Court has confirmed in the case of Hemmati v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2019] UKSC 56 that the detention of asylum seekers for their removal to other EU states under the Dublin Regulation was unlawful between 1 January 2014 and 15 March 2017, when new...
“Be careful what you wish for!”, could be the headline for the case of Ahmed (rule 18; PTA; Family Court materials) Pakistan [2019] UKUT 357 (IAC). Haseeb Ahmed, a Pakistani citizen, was initially refused an application for leave to remain by the Secretary of State. He won his appeal at...
Most people born in Northern Ireland have or are entitled to dual citizenship, British and Irish. Generally people apply for the passport of the country which they identify with — nationalists for Irish passports, unionists for British — and are never troubled by the legal fact that they may technically...
The Upper Tribunal has provided guidance on how First-tier Tribunal judges should approach attempts by the Home Office to revoke refugee status from Somalian nationals. SB (refugee revocation; IDP camps) Somalia [2019] UKUT 358 (IAC) confirms that it is, in principle, possible to revoke refugee status because internal relocation is...
In Idahosa v R [2019] EWCA Crim 1953 the Court of Appeal has ruled that an asylum seeker who had stopped over in the United Kingdom for 54 days en route to Canada can rely on the exception to false documents offences available to refugees. The court took a purposive...
The Upper Tribunal judgment in MS (British citizenship; EEA appeals) Belgium [2019] UKUT 356 (IAC) confirms that certain EU citizen children in the UK can be considered lawfully resident for the purposes of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, even if they (or their EU citizen parents...
Lawyers representing an Albanian woman suffering from appalling sexual exploitation have secured improvements in the system for reconsidering whether someone is a victim of human trafficking. Mr Justice Kerr found that the policy, which required officials to ignore new evidence if it didn’t come from approved sources, was wildly unlawful...
The Upper Tribunal has ruled that human rights appeals may be allowed on the ground that the Secretary of State has unlawfully failed to acknowledge that the appellant is a victim of trafficking. DC (Trafficking, Protection/Human Rights appeals : Albania) [2019] UKUT 351 (IAC) provides little guidance on how tribunals...
