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Gherson is pleased to announce the first issue of The Litigation Report. This is a periodical newsletter which provides up to date information about developments in corporate litigation. The report can be accessed here, and there is also a permanent link on the Gherson website’s Litigation page. The Litigation page also contains an email link to the Report’s editor so that anyone who wishes to can subscribe to the newsletter, and receive future copies as they become available.

On the 29 February 2008 the UK Border Agency opened the Register of Licensed Sponsors to employers wishing to issue Certificates of Sponsorship to migrants.

Certificates of Sponsorship will replace the current work permit system in its entirety when Tier 2 of the Points Based System goes live. The Agency currently anticipates that this will be in Autumn 2008. Employers who do not appear on the register will not be able to sponsor migrant workers.

On 12 February 2006 the Border and Immigration Agency (now the UK Border Agency) introduced a new requirement into the Immigration Rules relating to child visitors. (Paragraph 46A of the Immigration Rules).

The Rule requires in relation to visa nationals that if a child applies for an Entry Clearance (a visa) as an accompanied child, they must specify which parent or guardian will travel with them. As a consequence, the Home Office may interpret this as meaning that on each entry to the UK the child must be accompanied by the parent or guardian specified on their Entry Clearance. The child could be refused entry to the UK if they are not travelling with the person specified. 

The entitlement of people whose asylum applications have failed but have not returned to their home countries (frequently because they cannot be returned) to receive treatment on the National Health Service without being charged for it was considered by Mr Justice Mitting in R on the application of A v West Middlesex University Hospital NHS Trust [2008] EWHC 855 (11-4-2008).   As Mitting J noted early in his judgment:

Applications for asylum are usually made by people who have fled from the authorities in their home countries or from other “agents of persecution” from whom the authorities in their home countries cannot protect them.  However it is possible for people to become refugees after leaving their home countries.  This can happen because of things which they themselves have done which may caused the authorities in their home countries to regard them with hostility or because of events in their home countries whereby people who have the  asylum seeker's political or ethnic profile have become targeted.   Such people are called refugees “sur place”.  The circumstances of people who as a result of their own actions have developed a well founded fear of being persecuted in their home countries have always been seen as controversial.   

In a judgment handed down on 8 April 2008 Sir George Newman granted the HSMP Forum’s application for a declaration that the Secretary of State had unlawfully applied the changed provisions of the Highly Skilled Migrant Scheme to people who had entered the United Kingdom under the previous requirements of the scheme.  The judge found that due to the terms of the guidance provided to the applicants when they entered the UK under the HSMP they had legitimately expected that their applications to extend their stay in the UK would be considered under the same criteria which had applied when they had been granted leave to enter.  His crucial conclusion was:

In the most recent measure announced with respect to its Points Based System the UK Border Agency has announced that people currently in the United Kingdom in specific immigration categories which will be deleted as the Points Based System is implemented may complete their leave to remain under the existing terms of that leave.   If they apply successfully to extend their leave in their existing categories they will be granted enough further leave to remain to entitle them to apply for settlement in the UK at the expiry of that  further leave to remain.  

The new unified UK Borders Agency (which yesterday - 3 April 2008 - brought together Border, immigration, customs and visa checks) has updated its guidance to entry clearance officers to include both the new general grounds for refusal and the Secretary of State ’s concession announced in the House of Lords on 17 March 2008.

Last week the Secretary of State, via her representative Lord Bassam of Brighton in the House of Lords, made an important concession regarding the scope of the general grounds for refusal contained in the recent statement of changes in the immigration rules, HC 321.