Free Movement
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Free Movement, created by Colin Yeo, provides updates and advice on immigration, EU, nationality, and refugee law. Staffed by immigration lawyers & experts.
Free Movement
20h ago
As reported last week, the Irish High Court has held that the decision to put the UK on the list of safe third countries to return people seeking asylum to has been held unlawful. The case is A & anor v The Minister for Justice, Ireland and the Attorney General & anor [2024] IEHC 164 ..read more
Chief Inspector’s report on the social care sector finds issues with sponsor licences and compliance
Free Movement
20h ago
The Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration’s report An inspection of the immigration system as it relates to the social care sector’ has been published and has identified some serious shortcomings in the sponsor licence process for the sector, while noting that the Home Office has started putting systems in place to address some ..read more
Free Movement
2d ago
A consultation has been launched by the Home Office on a major increase to OISC registration fees. The deadline for responses is 5 June 2024. Fees currently bring in around £1.3 million and the OISC costs around £2.2 million to run. The increase is intended to close that gap so that the scheme is self-funding. The ..read more
Free Movement
2d ago
The High Court has heard three Hamid referrals, two of which concerned asylum cases and one of those resulted in a referral to the Solicitors Regulation Authority. Given the professional implications, any practitioner reading this should already be well aware of the Hamid jurisdiction, which is essentially a disciplinary process that can result in a ..read more
Free Movement
3d ago
It looks like the next time we will see the Rwanda Bill is Monday 15 April, which the government is presumably fine with despite noises to the contrary given a) it isn’t going to stop people coming, b) Rwanda isn’t ready yet, and c) they don’t seem to have any way of getting people there ..read more
Free Movement
3d ago
The Court of Appeal has upheld the Upper Tribunal’s decision that those who applied for the wrong type of family permit before the end of the Brexit transition period cannot benefit from the EU Settlement Scheme or the EU Withdrawal Agreement. The decision is Siddiqa v Entry Clearance Officer [2024] EWCA Civ 248. The leading ..read more
Free Movement
4d ago
The Upper Tribunal has held that a person who was on immigration bail is unable to rely on the exemption from needing to hold a relevant document (showing that the Home Office had already recognised residence as a durable partner) where a person otherwise had a lawful basis of stay in the UK. The case ..read more
Free Movement
4d ago
On 14 March 2024 the government published its latest statement of changes to the immigration rules, which included changes to a number of UK immigration categories. The most significant changes were to implement the plans laid out by the Home Secretary in December. These include raising the minimum income requirements for work visas, removing the ..read more
Free Movement
1w ago
The Upper Tribunal has dismissed the appeal of an Iraqi man who had falsely claimed to be Iranian in his first asylum claim. The appellant had returned to Iraq in 2012 when that claim was unsuccessful, before returning to the UK and making a fresh claim in January 2020. He explained in a witness statement ..read more
Free Movement
1w ago
This week the Sentencing Council published new draft sentencing guidelines for immigration offences within the Immigration Act 1971 and Identity Documents Act 2010. This includes offences expanded by the Nationality and Borders Act 2022. Previously, there had been no formal guidelines for these offences. The draft guidelines have been published for consultation, a process open ..read more