This month, Colin and Sonia mainly talk about an avalanche of asylum related news, law and updates. It's not all asylum, though, there's also some blog posts to go over on Comprehensive Sickness Insurance, third party support in spouse applications, marriages in durable partner cases, the opening of the citizenship route for Chagossian descendants and a Solicitor Regulation Authority report on immigration lawyers. They end by discussing a couple of opinion pieces Colin published, on whether the Home Office should be abolished and whether strategic litigation does more harm than good. 

The blog posts covered include:

Welcome to the October 2022 episode of the Free Movement immigration update podcast. This month, Colin and Sonia talk politics, asylum, the statement of changes to the immigration rules and case law. The episode is a bit longer than usual as there was a lot going on!

Politics 

Braverman attacks modern slavery victims and student families  

Assessing Braverman’s legacy as Home Secretary 

How much influence does the media have over the hostile environment? 

Home Office hotels not fit to house unaccompanied child asylum seekers 

Indefinite leave to remain applications under Appendix FM: slow, expensive and inaccessible 

Asylum 

Why has the asylum success rate gone up so much in recent years? 

Are people crossing the Channel in small boats doing anything illegal? 

Putting small boat crossings in perspective 

Ukrainians in the UK face a homelessness crisis and the government needs to act now 

What’s happening in the Rwanda legal challenges? 

Statement of Changes 

New statement of changes to the Immigration Rules: HC 719 (Afghanistan, Ukraine, and victims of trafficking) 

Statement of Changes HC 719: Ukraine Extension Scheme 

Statement of Changes HC 719: Appendix EU and Appendix EU (Family Permit) 

Statement of Changes HC 719: Appendix Temporary Permission to Stay for Victims of Human Trafficking or Slavery 

Case law 

Introducing proportionality assessments into marriage of convenience cases 

Lack of route for victims of transnational marriage abandonment is unlawful, High Court finds 

Home Office to review policy on timing of applications after single father’s right to work limbo 

Applicants from Afghanistan may not need to enrol biometrics at the time of an application 

Court of Appeal quash trafficking victim’s 2009 conviction 

Welcome to the September 2022 episode of the Free Movement immigration update podcast. This month Colin is joined again by “immigration lawyer about town”, as she put it, Sonia Lenegan. She is in danger of becoming a co-presenter if she carries on like this...

Amongst other things, they discuss Albanian asylum claims, age assessment, military conscription and asylum, Windrush and an important update to the guidance on good character in British citizenship applications.

If you would like to claim CPD points for reading the material and listening to this podcast, sign up here as a Free Movement member. There are well over 100 CPD hours of training materials available to members. You can find all the available courses here.

The 30-minute podcast follows the running order below.

Grand Chamber finds France breached the European Convention of Human Rights

Why are so many Albanian asylum claims succeeding if the country is so “safe and prosperous”?

Government lawyers confirm that the Albanian “fast track” removal scheme will not apply to asylum seekers

New critique of Home Office country information on Albanian blood feuds

Major European judgment on age assessment process

Would Russian men fleeing conscription qualify as refugees?

Amendments to the Windrush Compensation

Dependency under EU law: education as an essential living need

Guidance update: good character in nationality applications

How to apply for a Temporary Work – Creative Worker visa

Employers take note: all change for right to work checks from 1 October 2022

Colin and Sonia have a short chat about what's going on with immigration and asylum policy right now. With Truss and No 10 saying one thing and Braverman and the Home Office saying something very different, what should we make of it all? Are we going to have more students or less? Encourage skilled workers or reduce net migration? Cut unskilled migration or expand the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme? We thought we'd separate out a general discussion about politics and policy this month from the normal update, to try and keep the podcast short and snappy. We'll be back early next week with the normal update covering substantive legal developments from September 2022.

Welcome to episode 104 of the Free Movement immigration update podcast. This month Colin is joined by "immigration lawyer about town", as she puts it, Sonia Lenegan. Taking pity on Colin after his solo effort last month, Sonia is the legal and policy director at Rainbow Migration, a consultant solicitor at Saltworks and a volunteer at Asylos and the Unity Project. She previously worked at Hackney Law Centre and as the legal director at the Immigration Law Practitioners Association.

Our discussion is a bit more free ranging than for past update episodes and we run to just over 40 minutes. We discuss the change of Home Secretary, the direction of government immigration policy, some changes in policy and new visas and go through the latest case law. Let us know in comments or by email what you think of the slightly different approach.

If you would like to claim CPD points for reading the material and listening to this podcast, sign up here as a Free Movement member. There are well over 100 CPD hours of training materials available to members. You can find all the available courses here.

If you listen to podcasts on your mobile phone, you can subscribe for free on Anchor, iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher or by pointing your podcast player to the podcast feed for Free Movement. Using a mobile device and subscribing has the advantage that each new podcast can be automatically downloaded for listening to on the go.

To access previous Free Movement podcasts click here.

Welcome to episode 103 of the Free Movement immigration update podcast. This month — the first in something like five years with no CJ McKinney — I’m starting with some material on asylum and trafficking then quickly going over a bit of immigration and nationality history and why it matters today, before moving onto various bits of Home Office news and then ending with a couple off items on deportation and foreign national offenders.

If you would like to claim CPD points for reading the material and listening to this podcast, sign up here as a Free Movement member. There are well over 100 CPD hours of training materials available to members. You can find all the available courses here.

If you listen to podcasts on your mobile phone, you can subscribe for free on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher or by pointing your podcast player to the podcast feed for Free Movement. Using a mobile device and subscribing has the advantage that each new podcast can be automatically downloaded for listening to on the go.

To access previous Free Movement podcasts click here.

The immigration system has been through a lot since I started covering it for Free Movement five years ago. In September 2017, the UK was still in the two-year countdown to leaving the European Union, and there were even doubts about whether it would happen at all. The EU Settlement Scheme was still a twinkle in the Home Office's eye, and instead of the exciting post-Brexit points-based immigration system we had a boring old... points-based immigration system.

But while the basic architecture of the visa system remains largely the same, lots of the details have changed. Gone are the Investor and Entrepreneur routes, while in have come a host of new or (more commonly) rebranded visas: Innovator, Graduate, Global Talent, High Potential and Seasonal Worker. The flagship Skilled Worker route is now much easier to recruit into than Tier 2 (General) ever was, and visa issuances to non-Europeans have soared. That's led to a recent narrative that immigration has actually risen since Brexit -- although as Peter William Walsh of the Migration Observatory points out, this theory is somewhat lacking in key epistemic features, such as being true.

I spoke to Peter, Colin and business immigration guru Nichola Carter for a valedictory podcast looking back at the big themes and trends of the past five years in UK immigration, including Brexit, Windrush and Rwanda.

Welcome to episode 102 of the Free Movement immigration update podcast. This month we start with elements of the Borders Act 2022 coming into force before moving on to Appendix Private Life and Appendix FM. We then review the latest case law on criminal deportation, touch briefly on Zambrano applications, and conclude with Rwanda.

If you would like to claim CPD points for reading the material and listening to this podcast, sign up here as a Free Movement member. There are now over 100 CPD hours of training materials available to members. You can find all the available courses here.

The downloadable 29-minute podcast follows the running order below. Timestamps indicate when a particular section begins.

When is the Nationality and Borders Act 2022 coming into force?

Detailed policy on differential treatment of refugees announced

Humanitarian protection is being downgraded from 28 June 2022

New guidance on private life and family relationships

Judge takes “points based system” a bit too literally

Free family visas: the entry clearance fee waiver policy

Whether income is “lawfully derived” to be assessed case by case, Upper Tribunal holds

Supreme Court allows foreign criminal deportation case

Foreign convictions in deportation appeals

Challenge to “deport first, appeal later” process rejected

No change to settlement rules for Zambrano carers despite Akinsanya judgment

Home Office plans second flight to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda

How to respond to Rwanda removal notices