News
The LSC has announced that the new fixed fees for civil legal aid cases will be introduced as planned from October 2007, following a High Court ruling on 27 July 2007, click here
The Refugee Council has responded to the independent inquiry into disturbances at Harmondsworth and Campsfield detention centres. So has the Home Office / Border and Immigration Agency, click here and here
Removal bid an 'overreaction'. The Home Office has been criticised by the Court of Appeal for its "colossal overreaction" in trying to remove a skilled chef and his wife after they were accused of a trivial breach of immigration rules. See also R (Lim & another) v SSHD [2007] EWCA Civ 773, click here
A Human Rights Watch report released 26 July 2007 asserts that hundreds of unaccompanied migrant children from Africa held in Spanish government facilities in the Canary Islands are at risk of violence and ill-treatment, click here
Home Office / Border and Immigration Agency
A new, unified border force announced with electronic screening for all passengers (25 July 2007). Home Secretary backs technology to strengthen 'tough UK borders'. New technology is being used to strengthen the Government's ability to stop fraud and forgery and check people in and out of the country. This has already resulted in the details of 20 million passenger movements in and out of the UK being checked in 2006, resulting in 12,000 individuals being flagged for further checks and 1,000 arrests for a whole series of offences, click here and here
Cases
CH (Jamaica) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2007] EWCA Civ 792 (26 July 2007)
Where the SSHD had decided that an application did not come within the discretionary marriage policy DP3/96 because the applicant's husband had died and the marriage was not subsisting, interference with her private life was justified by the maintenance of a proper system of immigration control. On the facts of the case, delay in reaching that decision had not made a crucial difference, click here
DS (Afghanistan) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2007] EWCA Civ 774 (25 July 2007)
Where the SSHD had, as it was subsequently established erroneously, reached a legally permissible decision at the time not to apply to an asylum seeker a policy of granting time-limited exceptional leave to remain (because the SSHD had initially rejected S's claim to be an Afghan national), the task of the AIT on appeal was to assess risk and proportionality as things stood at the time of the hearing before it, and there was no legal obligation to place the asylum seeker in the same position as if the policy had been applied at the outset, click here
S & Ors v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2007] EWHC 1654 (Admin) (18 July 2007)
A decision to detain a mother and her two young children after the refusal of her asylum claim under the fast-track procedure was unlawful and an infringement of the ECHR, Art.5 as there were no strong grounds for believing that she would not comply with conditions of temporary admission if released. There had also been a breach of one of the children's right to physical integrity under Art.8 as his development of illnesses whilst in detention was reasonably foreseeable and avoidable, click here
AD (Qualification Directive, family member) [2007] UKAIT 00065 (23 July 2007)
There is no definition of 'family member' in Part 11 of the Immigration Rules. It is accordingly appropriate to refer to the definition in Article 2(h) of Council Directive 2004/83/EC, click here
