If you are detained, there can be big difficulties in accessing the legal advice you need to challenge your detention and/or progress your legal case.
As anyone attempting to make an online immigration application in recent weeks will know, the system is in a mess. A right royal mess.
In recent months, many applications have been made online only and the process has been outsourced to a company called Sopra Steria.
Last week, the Court of Appeal made a very important judgement on the Home Office’s policy on deciding the age of young people seeking asylum – also known as “age assessments”.
If your asylum, immigration or human rights application is refused by the Home Office, you may have the right to appeal.
Here’s a few things we thinks it’s useful for people to know if they’ve got an appeal hearing come up.
Are you supporting someone held in immigration detention, or want to know more about detention in the UK?
AVID (the Association of Visitors to Immigration Detainees) have released a new edition of their excellent handbook for visitors to those held in immigration detention.
The Home Office has confirmed that they are abandoning their target, brought in in 2014, of deciding straightforward asylum claims within six months.
The vitally important handbook produced by Bail for Immigration Detainees’ (BID) – ‘How to Get Out of Detention’ – has been translated into eighteen (18!) languages.
Since January 2015, nearly 1,700 applications for Indefinite Leave to Remain in the UK from people with Tier 1 leave to remain have been refused by the Home Office, under paragraph 322(5) of the immigration rules.
An article by May Bulman in the Independent this week revealed that the number of “fresh claims” has more halved, attributed to a change in procedure for lodging the claims with the Home Office.
A stateless person, as defined by the 1954 Convention relating to the Status of Stateless Persons is “a person who is not considered as a national by any State under the operation of its law”.
Although the UK signed up the 1954 Convention, there was no formal mechanism for recognising and providing protection to stateless people until 2013.