Settlement

The government yesterday published a draft version of its immigration and citizenship Bill.  Back in February we reported the government’s Green Paper Path to Citizenship.  The consultation period announced then closed at the end of May.   The Bill’s consultation period now begins.  If the timetable announced in February is met the Bill will commence its passage through parliament at the end of this year. 

The UK Borders Agency (the “UKBA”) yesterday  published a new policy in the light of the HSMP Forum’s successful application for judicial review of the changes to the qualifying criteria for extensions of leave to remain under the Highly Skilled Migrant Programme (“HSMP”). 

A new statement of changes in the Immigration rules, called HC607, implemented worldwide the whole of Tier One  of the United Kingdom Border Agency’s “points based system”.  

In GO v Secretary of State for the Home Department  [2008] EWCA Civ 747 the Court of Appeal has overturned the Asylum and Immigration Tribunal’s interpretation of the immigration rules concerning students’ obligations regularly to attend and to make satisfactory progress on their “courses of study”

In Maslov v Austria (Application no. 1638/03) the European Court of Human Rights, sitting as a Grand Chamber at the request of the Austrian government, decided the case of a young Bulgarian man who had been made the subject of an order excluding him from Austria for ten years.   Mr Maslov had won his case at first instance before the European Court sitting as a Chamber.  In its judgment released on Monday of this week  (23 June 2008) the Grand Chamber found by a majority of sixteen judges to one that the expulsion order was a breach of his rights protected by Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights.  

Under the statement of changes in the immigration rules (HC 607) announced on Monday and which is effective from 30 June 2008, the UKBA has implemented the whole of Tier one of the points based system.  

The European Parliament’s Commission on Petitions has decided that a petition questioning the correctness of the United Kingdom’s “transposition” of Article 16 of Directive 2004/38/EC (the “Citizens’ Directive) is admissible.   Article 16 of the Citizens’ Directive gives nationals of the European Union  the right to reside permanently in member states in which they have resided for five years. “EEA nationals” (nationals of the European Economic Area) are citizens of the European Union as well as nationals of Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Switzerland.

Solicitors at Gherson have secured a successful result in an appeal against a decision to remove one of their clients from the UK. The Secretary of State has not made any application for reconsideration of the determination allowing Gherson’s client’s appeal.  

Back in May of 2007 on this site we reported that the Border and Immigration Agency (the previous title of what is now the UK Borders Agency or the UKBA) was refusing applications by Iraqi, Nepalese, Sudanese and Filipino doctors (among others) for leave to enter or to remain in the UK under the Highly Skilled Migrant Programme.  The United Kingdom National Academic Recognition Information Centre (UKNARIC) was appointed by the BIA to decide whether qualifications (including doctors’ undergraduate degrees in medicine) awarded by universities in the applicants' own countries were equivalent to the UK standard.  It was assessing the doctors’ qualifications as not being “equivalent”.