With the Brexit psychodrama continuing to monopolise airtime and public attention, it would be easy to overlook the government’s recent announcement of a new visa route for foreign students in the UK. Providing a bit of relief from the general d ...

September and October are important and busy enrolment periods for Tier 4 student visa sponsors. Immigration compliance teams had enough to contend with this academic year with the introduction of passport eGates, which means having to find evidence o ...

The two-year post study work visa has returned from the dead, apparently. Multiple statements, from the Prime Minister, the Business Secretary, the Department for Education and, last and least, the Home Office have been released announcing the resurre ...

A new statement of changes to the Immigration Rules was published yesterday, 9 September 2019. This post will cover changes to work and student visa routes, while a separate post deals with changes to the EU Settlement Scheme and other changes br ...

Since 20 May 2019, people from Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea and the USA have been able to enter the UK using ePassport gates (‘eGates’). British and EU citizens have been able to use eGates since 2008. The ...

Depending on which pundit you speak to, a no-deal Brexit has either got more likely or less likely over the last couple of weeks. It remains the default if the UK-EU withdrawal agreement is not passed at the third time of asking, and a further extensi ...

Last week the Court of Appeal dealt with the issue of fairness and discretion in the context of the Points Based System. Specifically, it decided that such values take a firm second place to predictability. The case is R (Dharmeshkumar Bhupendrabhai P ...

In R (on the application of Iqbal) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2017] EWHC 79 (Admin) the Secretary of State for the Home Department (SSHD) was found to have unlawfully detained a claimant whom they had alleged had fraudulently obtai ...

The President of the Immigration and Asylum Chamber of the Upper Tribunal has found that the Home Office abused its power in forcing a college to expel a student and deliberately depriving him of a statutory right of appeal. The case has now been r ...

The Points Based System is notoriously complex and indecipherable. Initially I believe this was simply incompetence on the part of Home Office officials unable to communicate in plain English and ill equipped to design to and then adapt to the constan ...

“Technical”, “deeply unattractive”, “disingenuous”, “singularly lacks merit”, “ridiculous”, “inappropriate”, “extraordinary”. All words used by Elias or Vos LLJ to des ...

President McCloskey has firmly rejected the Home Office case against students alleged to have fraudulently obtained English language test certificate from ETS (“Educational Testing Services Ltd”) in the case of SM and Ihsan Qadir v Secr ...

A recent report by the Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration, David Bolt, revealed that the management of curtailment decisions in Tier 4 cases is inconsistent and the Home Office is unable to deal with the thousands of curtailment cases and ...

The quarterly immigration statistics were published this morning. Net migration has reached its highest ever level, now standing at 336,000 for the year ended June 2015. Immigration increased by 62,000 to 636,000 and emigration decreased by 20,000 to ...

Back in the day, One Direction enjoyed considerable success and dominated the reported charts. Without a picture in the attic, though, good fortune and good looks cannot last forever. Decline is inevitable. It can be embraced with dignity but this elu ...

Statement of Changes in Immigration Rules HC 297 was published today, 13 July 2015, having been trailed in The Daily Mail over the weekend. It includes some significant changes, particularly for international students. I’m technically on holida ...

The Upper Tribunal has given judgment in a test case on ETS appeals and judicial reviews: R (on the application of Gazi) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (ETS – judicial review) IJR [2015] UKUT 327 (IAC). It is essential reading for anyo ...

Having just finished drafting grounds for judicial review in a case involving a refusal of a Tier 4 study application on the grounds that the applicant was not a “genuine student” I was interested to see the new case of R (on the applicat ...

I recently acted in an appeal concerning a Tier 4 Student application in which the sole reason for refusal concerned the appellant’s English language ability.  Since April 2011 all degree–level students have been required to show knowledge of Eng ...