Free Movement

In this month's round-up, Jasmine is joined by Mala Savjani, an associate solicitor at Wilsons. They cover the latest tribunal statistics, which make for grim reading as the asylum appeals backlog has climbed past 87,000 cases. With roughly twice as many cases coming in as going out, anyone lodging an appeal now faces a wait of close to three years. Mala then unpacks the judicial review challe...

This month, Jasmine is joined by Isaac Abraham, a solicitor at the Islington Law Centre. They discuss the King’s speech and the latest immigration statistics, which show a fall in net migration and asylum claims, but a steadily growing appeals backlog. The number of sponsor licence revocations has also shot up. Jasmine  interviewed Luke Piper  last month about the devastation this is causing to sp...

In the April round-up, Jasmine is joined by Mala Savjani, an associate solicitor at Wilsons. They cover April’s most significant developments, which includes a Court of Appeal decision on what past ill-treatment actually has to look like to amount to persecution, a landmark European Court of Human Rights ruling on returns to Afghanistan, and a High Court judgment looking at whether single hotel ro...

In the March round-up, Jasmine is joined by Chris Dias to discuss a new practitioner's guide to children's protection claims, whether policies to deter asylum seekers actually work and what happens when the Home Office grants settlement by mistake. They cover a number of cases including the latest in the Diego Garcia saga and the Court of Appeal's approach to deportation and subjective...

In the February round up, Jasmine and Barry discuss the Home Office's new pilot for children's asylum claims and dig into the latest immigration statistics. They cover some crucial advice for clients, including what to do if you're refused entry at the UK border, whether you can apply for settlement early to avoid the new ‘earned settlement’ proposals and how to fight a bank account cl...

In Sonia's final episode, we cover the first substantive judgment concerning the use of “public order disqualification” powers in trafficking cases, an updated CPIN on Pakistan for LGBT+ people and the policy that's pushing people in conflict zones to make dangerous journeys to enrol their biometrics. Barry covers a really important judgment on children's settlement applications (a cru...

That's officially a wrap on 2025 as Sonia and Barry run through December's various happenings, including the final statement of changes for the year and our latest resources on the earned settlement proposals. The Border Security, Asylum and Immigration Act is now in force and the latest tribunal statistics show that the Home Office's insistence on filling the appeals system with chall...

What a month. Sonia kicked off the podcast with a runthrough of the major policy proposals which came out in November, including the changes to refugee settlement periods and a look at the earned settlement proposals (though not in too much detail as she is doing a full webinar with Colin on the topic for Free Movement members on Wednesday 10 December at 11am). Barry had provided oral evidence to...

Our October round up is here! Barry does the honours thistime around with the statement of changes and Sonia foreshadows some bad news potentially coming next week. Barry shares an AI horror story that is really one for the ages (so far) after Sonia’s segment on the latest lawyers to fallfoul of AI hallucinated case citations. We also cover a new briefing on biometric excuses and predeterminations...

September brought us a new Home Secretary who immediately made some inaccurate comments about “last minute” legal challenges to removal and the modern slavery identification system, so Sonia looked at those in this month’s podcast. Sonia also covered the final act of the previous Home Secretary, which was the closure of the refugee family reunion route. Refugees do still haveother options, but wit...

Let's face it, August was a rough one and hopefully most of you managed to escape it for a summer holiday at some point, in which case you definitely need Sonia and Barry to help catch you up! The UK announced its new arrangements to return people arriving across the Channel to France, hotels used as asylum accommodation hit the headlines as far right protests hit the streets, and the latest i...

July was actually a fairly busy month! Join Sonia and Barry as they run you through what happened, including the changes to the skilled worker route, everything that happened on Afghan resettlement, recent changes to the EU Settlement Scheme and the latest instalment in a far too long running Palestinian case. An article from BID flagging up a really important change being proposed to cautions got...

Time for your June round up of all things Free Movement - and Barry is back! In this month's episode both Sonia and Barry divulge some rather niche interests, while discussing the second latest (!!) statement of changes, the Migration Advisory Committee's review into the minimum income requirement, the legal aid crisis (the increase was announced the day of recording ) and impact on the tr...

May is over and the immigration white paper has finally been published, so Sonia spends a bit of time at the beginning of this month's podcast reliving the horrors of that. Andrew covers a very wide range of topics in this episode, from deprivation of citizenship to "self sponsorship" to deportation of EU nationals to visitors. Sonia goes on (yet another) rant about eVisas. If there is a potential...

It was a relatively quiet April ahead of what looks to be a busy May. Sonia is joined by Andrew again this month. Sonia runs through the amendments made at committee stage of the Border Security, Asylum and Immigration one and despaired over the lack of attention given to the case where the UK detained a Brazilian tourist for eight weeks. Andrew looks at Asylum Aid's successful statelessness c...

This month Barry is away and so his colleague Andrew Jones has stepped up and stepped in to co-host with Sonia, and frankly made it all look rather easy. March was a busy one, and Sonia and Andrew rattled through a lot. There were some big decisions in the asylum world, including Wethersfield and an important one on asylum support and withdrawals. Sonia attempted to explain an incredibly complex t...

The February podcast is here! We kick off with Sonia briefly summarising the recently published statistics for 2024. There was then a lot to cover on asylum with several case updates and of course the recent Home Office changes to the good character requirements. Barry was thrilled to be able to discuss his favourite section of the British Nationality Act 1981 as well as getting to cover Alex Pile...

Sonia and Barry are back already to celebrate the end of January! There is a brief look back at 2024 and look forward to 2025 which of course now includes the new Bill (seriously what are we calling this thing for short? BSAIB just doesn't work, as Barry ably demonstrates). Sonia and Barry cover two of the recent Court of Appeal deprivation cases, as well as Asylum Aid's recent statelessne...

It’s goodbye to 2024 in this month’s podcast, with Sonia and Barry wrapping up December. They spend a bit of time discussing eVisas at the beginning of the podcast, before moving on to asylum and trafficking where issues around the quality of decision making have been raised in a couple of different posts. Barry covered two Court of Appeal decisions on the EU Settlement Scheme as well as an Upper...

Barry returns and joins Sonia to run you through November on Free Movement. It was statistics galore for Sonia who covered the latest immigration, asylum and trafficking figures. A surprise statement of changes contained bad news for Colombians and Ukrainians. Barry was a really big fan of Colin's review of the latest Paddington movie and enthusiastically endorsed Alex Piletska's suggestion that t...

Colin's back! But for how long? All is revealed in our October roundup podcast. Plus Sonia and Colin discuss hot topics such as the new practice direction for appeals in the First-tier Tribunal, appeals backlogs, issues in asylum interviews and reaccreditation for the Law Society's immigration and asylum scheme. We also cover the latest Supreme Court decision on the best interests of children, a c...

In this episode of the podcast Barry does everyone a big favour by taking us through the autumn statement of changes in detail. Sonia and Barry also have a bit of a call to arms on discretionary grants of indefinite leave to remain and tackling the ten year route. The importance of scrutinising country policy and information notes in asylum claims is covered over a few different articles. Barry go...

Barry joins Sonia again this month to look back at what happened in August. We cover the latest statistics on asylum, immigration and trafficking. There are a couple of cases relating to asylum family reunion, as well as a policy change for those separated during Operation Pitting. Other cases covered included deprivation of citizenship, an unsuccessful challenge to legal aid provision for young p...

It's August and Colin is away on holiday so Sonia was joined by a very special guest, Barry O'Leary, for the July roundup. Sonia and Barry discussed the end of the Rwanda scheme and the resumed processing of asylum cases, things not to do when carrying out an asylum backlog clearance, and the latest pause on decision making. They also cover the many EU Settlement Scheme cases that came out...

Here is your June round up of Free Movement. In this episode Colin and Sonia discuss why the Illegal Migration Act should be repealed, an appalling decision on trafficking delays, a much better decision on section 3C leave, the raised standard of proof in asylum claims, one and a bit cases on challenging judicial behaviour, the latest care home revocation case and much much more. By popular (?) de...