As well as formally lowering the spouse visa age back to 18 through a formal change to the Immigration Rules on 28 November 2011 in response to the Quila case, the UK Border Agency is enabling the review of cases where applications were refused solely ...

UPDATE: see later post for information on applying for a review if your case has already been refused. The Government has announced today that the spouse visa age will be lowered again from 21 to 18. The change will take effect as of 28 November 2011. ...

UPDATE: SEE LATEST POST. Following a hell of a lot of confused, confusing and anguished comments on my last post on Quila, I thought it might be helpful to set out my take on the effect of Quila. The first thing to say is that I would be very wary of ...

UPDATE: SEE LATEST POST. In a judgment just handed down the Supreme Court has by a majority dismissed the Home Secretary’s appeal against the Court of Appeal’s ruling in the case of Quila v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2011] ...

[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 ...

Permission has been granted to the Secretary of State to appeal to the Supreme Court against the judgment of the Court of Appeal in the case of Quila & Anor v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2010] EWCA Civ 1482, concerning the increase ...

There have been several quite distraught sounding commenters on my previous piece on the outcome of the Quila case, which is understandably causing confusion. I thought it might be useful to set out what I understand to be the current legal position. ...

The Court of Appeal has declared unlawful the application of the increased spouse visa age to the appellants in the Quila appeal. The judgment is available now: Quila & Anor v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2010] EWCA Civ 1482 (21 De ...

New Immigration Rules have just been laid in Statement of Changes CM 7944. The main change is that the English language requirement for spouses and partners has been introduced, as expected. It takes effect for new applications made on or after 29 Nov ...

The new Government is making it a requirement that all spouses coming to the UK will need to know a minimum level of English. That wasn’t in the coalition immigration policy document. I wonder what else they have up their sleeves that wasn’ ...

Yet more changes to the rules. Haven’t had a chance to look properly as I am on my way to Liverpool right now but the press release suggests tightening up of Tiers 1 and 2 and a further spouse visa age travesty. The full Statement of Changes to ...

The JCWI challenge to the increase to the spouse and partner visa age from 18 to 21 has been dismissed: Quila v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2009] EWHC 3189 (Admin) (07 December 2009). For previous coverage of this issue on Free Moveme ...

Two more things on this topic. One, I’ve belatedly discovered that UKBA released a draft version of the research report covered previously on this blog. The final version is in fact a more polished piece of work. One can only assume that UKBA de ...

Back to this old chestnut. I’ve been doing a bit more work on the subject and thought I’d share a minor revelation I had while writing an article for one of the immigration law journals. I’ve also learned that there is a judicial rev ...

I’ve created a new category on the visa age to keep track of the different posts I’ve written on this subject over the last couple of years. The Home Office have provided further reasons for rejecting the research that found that increasin ...

Courtesy of the Freedom of Information Act, I can exclusively report (I’ve never written that before!) that the Home Office has finally released the full research report it commissioned into the issue of forced marriages and the spouse visa age. ...

The Home Office recently increased the minimum age for both spouses to 21 if a foreign spouse is to enter the UK on a spouse visa. The same requirements apply to unmarried, same sex and civil partners. As discussed previously on this blog, the justifi ...

UKBA have announced a limited concession to the rise in the visa age to 21 for spouses and partners. The concession is simply that the rule will not be applied to spouses and partners seeking entry to accompany or join immigrants in the temporary visa ...

Only yesterday I was telling someone there is no timescale for the Home Office to introduce this controversial measure, but today it has been announced it will take effect from 27 November 2008. The history is that a consultation was put out in 2007 a ...

Yesterday the Foreign and Commonwealth Office launched a new forced marriage survivor’s handbook. A specific team, the Forced Marriage Unit, was set up two years ago to deal with this issue and is reported to be dealing with 250 cases a year. Obvio ...

Until 2002 or thereabouts, the minimum age for the fiance in the UK who was to marry the person from abroad was 16 but the minimum age for the person from abroad was 18. These ages were then equalised at 18. It would appear that the age for both is so ...