Because of the Coronavirus public health crisis, there have been some temporary changes to the asylum and immigration process. This includes to the asylum substantive interview, further submissions, visa extensions, appeal hearings, reporting requirements and detention.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, reporting requirements have been paused for many people and largely reduced for others. Now that the lockdown measures are relaxing, the Home Office are likely to start to ask people to report again.

Migrants Organise have produced a checklist to help you see if your reporting requirements are appropriate to your situation. If the requirements aren’t appropriate, you may be able to challenge them

Leah Cowan’s Border Nation (published by Pluto Press) is a short, sharp, incisive analysis of the colonial origins of borders, the violence of immigration control and the profit motive driving so much of immigration policy and practice.

There are quotable lines on every page of this short book, which manages to dig deep into the issues and link up weighty ideas while still being very accessible.

We get a lot of people contacting us with queries about requesting permission to work from the Home Office, when you have been waiting a long time for a decision on your asylum claim.

Following two legal challenges, the Home Office has amended its published policy on granting permission to work. In this new document, they specify the contact details for requesting permission.

A month ago, the Home Secretary Priti Patel announced her New Immigration Plan, with a lot of fanfare about delivering reformed asylum system.

Some aspects of the proposals are actually current policy, some are ideas that have been floated before, many will result in legal challenges. None are the changes that the asylum and immigration system needs.

Gina Antchandie from Croydon Council talks about the creative process of developing the Young Asylum Guide in collaboration with Lisa from Right to Remain and young unaccompanied minors.

This week, we are delighted to launch into the world a brand new online resource that we’ve been working on with Gina Antchandie of Croydon Council during these difficult Covid days: the young asylum guide.

The UK government has introduced new regulations under which they can rule that an asylum claim is inadmissible. This means the Home Office does not have to consider the claim in the UK if they rule that another country – a “safe third country” – should in fact be responsible for your asylum claim.

Yes, well. It’s been quite a year.

Aside from, well, everything we’ve had a busy year recruiting new members of our Management Committee, appointing new roles within the Committee AND we’ve had three fab new staff members join us. That’s been a lot of zoom calls.

The All4One group has launched a brilliant new resource on age assessments. The All4One group, based with GMIAU, are in Greater Manchester and have themselves experienced age assessments.