The immigration and borders inspector, David Neal, tells MPs he was left "speechless" after visiting the short-term migrant detention centre in Manston, Kent on Monday and seeing the overcrowding and staffing situation.
What will happen to the tens of thousands of asylum seekers already in the UK who won't have their asylum claim processed, assuming they can't all be sent to Rwanda?
@CommonsPACAC
asked Home Office top brass the million dollar question this afternoon:
European Court of Human Rights confirms it has granted an injunction preventing the removal to Rwanda, for three weeks, of an Iraqi man who arrived in the UK by boat last month and claimed asylum.
"Having carefully considered the government's legislative programme in the round, I can inform the House that we have decided not to proceed with the Bill of Rights"
How are those temporary visas schemes for poultry workers, HGV drivers and pork butchers going? As of last week:
🐔 5,500 places, "a couple of thousand" applicants
🚚 5,000 places, "a couple of hundred" applicants
🥩 800 places, applications "in the dozens".
Key announcement: "I am laying a statutory instrument which ends the retrospective nature of the Illegal Migration Act provisions so that the Home Office can immediately start clearing [asylum] cases from after March 2023".
Egocentric professional news: after five great years editing
@freemovementlaw
, I'm starting a new job as an immigration researcher
@commonslibrary
in a few weeks.
Not a partisan point but this is true: Ukrainian visa policy is all over the shop. The Home Secretary says and tweets one thing; Home Office press office and website another. I don’t suppose border guards know any more about it than Ukrainians trying to get in - it’s a disaster.
Real confusion on Home Office sanctuary rules for Ukraine.
I asked
@pritipatel
today if elderly parents were included in family arrangements & if the elderly Ukrainian widow turned away from Eurostar by Border Force at weekend can now join her daughter. She said yes.
Slipped out on Christmas Eve: government throws in the towel on post-Brexit immigration policy being highly-skilled only. Social care workers are classified as lower-skilled, but can now get Skilled Worker visas if paid £20,480+.
Why has the Home Office only let in 50 Ukrainians so far?
Fundamentally, as I've been boring people about all week, because they set up a visa rather than refugee scheme. (1/2)
A world away from the stereotype of fat cat QCs gorging on Russian roubles, hundreds of British lawyers are quietly beavering away unpaid to help Ukrainian refugees.
Conservative peer Sayeeda Warsi on the treatment of Nusrat Ghani MP: "This is somebody who was a government minister who was told that her job came to an end because of a protected characteristic. That is actually against the law".
#r4today
For those asking: "Please note that the European Court of Human Rights is part of the 46-nation Council of Europe, of which the UK is a member state, and not the 27-member European Union".
One of the law firms involved in today's Rwanda case *was* attacked the last time passions over left-wing activist lawyers ran high.
A man who admitted threatening reception staff is on trial next month for allegedly plotting to kill a senior solicitor.
There is a deliberate government strategy to target and vilify lawyers. It includes pursuing policies which they will have been advised are unlawful, then blaming lawyers for exposing this. When lawyers are attacked or killed the politicians will “express regret”.
Small boat arrivals in 2021:
- 98% claimed asylum
- Of those, 4% have had their asylum claim decided
- Of those, 85% have been granted asylum or similar status
High Court judgment on the Home Office's unlawful policy of seizing migrants' phones. . The totally normal, non-dysfunctional department has apologised for initially telling the court that "there was no policy".
An average of five (5) people a year are prosecuted for overstaying, but the Borders Bill raises the theoretical maximum sentence from six months to four years. . This is what
@ColinYeo1
means by immigration policy being "theatre".
Home Office concedes that its Borders Bill might have put the RNLI at risk of prosecution for rescuing asylum seekers in the Channel, and is changing the Bill accordingly.
Rwanda flight: general injunction refused. High Court may yet issue orders taking individual claimants off the plane but won't issue a general pause on removal of refugees.
I don't consider the boC favoyrs grant of Generic order. I don't consider the challenge based on illegality of immig rules show any general triable issue. Cs submission in support of generic readins rests on Rw as a safe country being irrational
Immigration minister Kevin Foster says the government can't bring Ukrainians over without visas and do the biometric checks here because that might mean throwing them into detention centres.
I would simply... not put them in detention?
A man with permanent residence in the UK who lost his travel document while abroad in 2009 has been stranded in Ethiopia ever since - for the last *15 years*.
Trinidad-born man living legally in the UK since 1959 unable to work for past 13 years for lack of documentation - didn't know he could get help as a textbook Windrush victim.
All normal Parliamentary business is suspended until two days after the State Funeral.
Some information from the Speaker of the House of Commons about arrangements over the next couple of days:
If this report accurate, illegal immigration bill would make asylum claims *automatically* void if the person arrived by boat . At the moment, such claims *may* be void (and usually processed after 6 months if nowhere to send the person)
Blown away by the response to this - there is not exactly a lot of spare pro bono capacity in immigration law and lawyers are volunteering in droves anyway, no hesitation.
Over 100 lawyers have now registered to volunteer to offer free immigration advice to Ukrainians. At the same time, we now have over 100 new requests for advice and we are working hard to allocate as many as possible. Please bear with us as we are currently facing high demand.
The Sunday Times has five government sources saying Manston is an "unofficial detention centre", "an entirely illegal situation" that could "cost the taxpayer millions".
The UK government is downgrading "humanitarian protection", which is like refugee status but for people fleeing war zones instead of state persecution.
Nobody likes a factchecker but: the "dependants" allowed on a student visa are partners and under-18 children, not random other relatives, which is honestly quite an important distinction in an article about student visa numbers
The Guardian reports that the European injunction applies, in principle, to all the asylum seekers due for removal to Rwanda tonight so the flight may be grounded.
Documents disclosed as part of High Court litigation show civil servants are worried that the Rwandan government could use the refugee relocation deal as leverage to stop the UK criticising its human rights record.
Immigration inspector hits out at the Home Office for sitting on his review of small boat crossings. David Neal says the "continued failure to publish such an important report infringes on my independence".
Top nationalities of small boat arrivals in 2021 compared to success rate in asylum claims before appeal:
8,000 Iranians: 89% get asylum
5,000 Iraqis: 47% get asylum
3,000 Eritreans: 97% get asylum
2,000 Syrians: 99% get asylum
1,000 Vietnamese: 71% get asylum
Big breaking news from the SRA... they have shut down the firms and lawyers named in the Daily Mail immigration investigation last week. More
@lawsocgazette
soon.
NEW: Fears Afghans in ‘desperate need’ to miss out as 1/3 resettlement places filled by those already in UK
6,500+ Afghans evacuated to Britain last year will be granted ACRS places, meaning the scheme has exceeded its 1st yr target of 5,000 within 1month
"What the Gray report does show is that Number 10 Downing Street was not observing the regulations they had imposed on members of the public", Theresa May tells the House of Commons.
The Northern Ireland Executive is "manifestly still in breach" of its duty to come up with an Irish language strategy, High Court finds. The law requiring it came into force in May 2007.
Re Conradh Na Gaelige [2022] NIQB 56
Challenge to failure of NI Executive Committee to adopt Irish language strategy - s28D NI Act '98 - Previous declaration made in 2017 - Breach of statutory duty remains and further declaration made - Need for expedition
Migrants in the UK don't have to register at their local police station any more, it appears. The written policy has been pulled and now says "Police registration is no longer required".
Prime Minister tells
#wato
that Ukrainians without family ties to the UK can "already" be privately sponsored for visas.
They cannot: the "Local Sponsorship Scheme" isn't open for applications. May only be an idea at this stage.
Prime Minister says that "anyone entering the UK illegally, as well as those who have arrived illegally since January 1st, may now be relocated to Rwanda".
In principle that would include Ukrainian refugees who have entered the UK via Ireland.
Around 40 barristers are instructed in the refugees-to-Rwanda litigation.
The case will be heard over seven days in September and October, the High Court has decided.
Today's immigration stats confirm an asylum system in crisis.
The number of decisions on whether to accept or reject someone's asylum claim crashed in pandemic year 2020 - fine.
But in 2021, decisions recovered just 2%.
Solicitor Tessa Gregory, who is in court today arguing for a pause on flights to Rwanda, says the system is "procedurally unfair and carries with it a real risk of people being forcibly removed without having had effective access to legal advice".
#r4today
Stats watchdog on claims that Labour left a vast asylum backlog in 2010: “the statements by Ministers that you asked about do not reflect the position shown by the Home Office’s statistics”.
Heated discussion on
#r4today
about whether anyone has yet been detained under the Illegal Migration Act, but of course they haven’t: the act’s new immigration detention powers aren’t even in force yet.
“While we agree with the Home Secretary that the asylum system is broken, we invite her to make it clear, given the long-term and growing pressures on the system, that it was not migrants crossing the Channel who broke it.”
Today we have published our report on Channel crossings, migration and asylum
📃Read our report here:
📃Read our conclusions and recommendations here:
🔎Find out more here:
Repeats ad nauseam: a visa scheme is not calibrated for an emergency situation.
Blaming red tape for delays is a bit like complaining about traffic on the drive to Mongolia: the underlying problem is that you chose not to fly.
The refugees minister has blamed Home Office red tape for the "unacceptable" delays to Ukrainians' applications for refuge in UK homes that have seen just 2,700 visas granted in two weeks.
Interesting data on the average number of days between someone claiming asylum and the claim being recorded at a screening interview (it is supposed to take a week or two).
Sajid Javid says, incorrectly, that Ukrainians in the UK on work or other temporary visas can "bring your family here under the extended Family Scheme". In fact the scheme is limited to the sponsors below.
#r4today
Senior immigration judge: "Some parts of the rules relating to the EU Settlement Scheme are so difficult to comprehend that it is at least arguable that they lack the clarity of law... Like Alice in Wonderland one falls down a rabbit hole".
Just alerted to this 👌 unreported UT App EU decision.
The UT *GAVE UP* trying to understand the durable partner provisions. 'Not a good use of court time'. Bang on analysis of all of the drafting issues.
Just read the whole thing:
Law Society on reported changes to Illegal Migration Bill: “If the UK were to refuse to comply with a European Court of Human Rights ruling this would entail a clear and serious breach of international law”.
Disappointing news here for the small but highly motivated community of people who have just interviewed and filed a profile of the Shadow Justice Secretary, David Lammy, talking about legal stuff
David Lammy will move to become the Shadow Foreign Secretary. Emily Thornberry to shadow Attorney General. Steve Reed to Shadow Justice Secretary, Lucy Powell to Culture and Sport, and Labour sources point to a crucial appointment of Lisa Nandy to shadow Michael Gove
Afghan judges win High Court case. The government's refusal to consider their emergency visa applications "has resulted in delay, leaving the Claimants in a dangerous situation as they are at risk of harm from the Taliban".
@ColinYeo1
The experience of people contacting the helpline to ask about the fee waiver is that normal rules are in practice being waived and Leave outside the Rules granted, but there is no way of knowing that from the text on that page and maybe not everyone has that experience anyway.
50 visas issued on a route only set up on Friday is unbelievably fast *by the standards of the mainstream immigration system*.
50 refugees rescued from under Putin's guns is... not brilliant.
EU lets Ukrainians in without visas, to sort out paperwork later. UK could, but won't.
The EU citizens' rights watchdog is in court next week arguing that people automatically losing their right to remain if they don't upgrade from pre-settled to settled status is a breach of the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement.
Full written argument is online:
This is how much money goes to the French government to stop the boats, according to the Home Office (I do not recall them straightforwardly publishing the figures before)
A trust fund set up in 1928 to pay off the UK's national debt, now worth £600 million (or 0.026% of public sector net debt), will go to the Treasury instead of to charity, the High Court has decided.
The High Court has ordered the Home Office to reconsider using Napier Barracks to house asylum seekers, saying that it had failed to factor in the long-term impact on community relations and local services.
Immigration and borders inspector tells MPs they may need to change the law to open the Home Office up to external scrutiny, which it is "not particularly keen on".
BIG NEWS - following a challenge from the NI Human Rights Commission, the High Court has just found large swathes of the Illegal Migration Act 2023 incompatible with the Withdrawal Agreement and the ECHR. Adam Straw KC and myself instructed by
@NIHRC
.
Link to today's government announcement on visa taxes and fees:
- Immigration health surcharge to rise 66%, from £624 a year to £1,035
- Work and visit visa fees up 15%
- Other visas, extensions, settlement and citizenship up 20%
No timeframe given.
Calais MP Pierre-Henri Dumont says 300 Ukrainians with family in the UK have been turned away at the border for not having a visa, told to go to Paris or Brussels: “it’s a mess, to be clear”. Calls for a temporary consulate to process applications.
#r4today
The Supreme Court is about to begin hearing an appeal on whether it is legal to send asylum seekers to Rwanda. A useful
@jed_pennington
summary of the legal arguments:
From next month, people granted humanitarian protection only get to stay in the UK temporarily for 2.5 years at a time, rather than for 5 years on a pathway to permanent residence as they do at the moment.
@yuanyi_z
“Here we will have a nature reserve, within these defined boundaries you cannot build.”
“OK, how about this plot outside the boundaries?”
“No.”
The Home Office now says it will not increase the minimum income required to sponsor a spouse/partner visa to £38,700 in spring 2024. Instead it will go to £29,000 in spring 2024, but further increases will be phased in over time.