Details Of New Immigration Bill Released

The Home Office has today published details of its Immigration Bill. It is a wide-ranging proposal firmly in the vein of the recent trend towards toughening up immigration control. For the sake of brevity, below I will cherry-pick the most relevant bits of the Home Office's announcement.

Cutting the right of appeal

The Bill will cut the right of appeal against immigration decisions so that such a right is only held in response to four types of decision (down from seventeen). This has been on the cards for some time and is primarily motivated by a desire to strip out costs from the appeals procedure. Essentially, applicants will only now have a right of appeal when refused asylum, leave on the basis of human rights or where humantarian protection or refugee status is revoked. Appeals against all other types of decision will be replaced by the system of administrative review, which has been prevalent wih entry clearance applications. The Bill does not address quite how an already under-resourced Home Office is to entertain thousands of requests for administrative review. It also deprives potentially millions of applicants from the safety net of an appeal before a specialist independent Tribunal.

The Home Office impact assessment states that many applicants will 'benefit' from a different decisionmaker reviewing a particular decision made, especially, it says, in Points Based System cases which are, it suggests, box-ticking exercises. But how does that approach fit in with the introduction of a 'genuineness' test for many PBS categories, in which decisionmakers are involved in a subjective assessment of the genuineness of an application? Can a review by a colleague of the original decisionmaker ever be objective?

Applicants will be well advised to ensure that when they apply for leave to enter or remain they leave absolutely no room for error whatsoever.

Extending the ability to deport foreign nationals

In what must be seen as a follow on from Theresa May's battle with the courts earlier in the year, the Bill proposes to extend the range of 'non-suspensive appeals'. That is, the Home Office can deport first and an appeal hearing will follow on later...

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