Category: citizenship

Refusal and revocation of British citizenship for dishonest conduct – Free Movement

Posted January 20th, 2016 in asylum, citizenship, deceit, fraud, immigration, news, statistics by sally

‘In another reminder that British citizenship can be refused on the basis of past dishonest conduct we have the case of R (on the application of Rushiti & Anor) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2014] EWHC 3931 (Admin). This one dates back a few months but I’m afraid I only just found it in my drafts folder. It involves two linked cases, both of which are further examples of Albanians entering the UK and pretending to be Kosovar, eventually obtaining immigration status then applying for British citizenship.’

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Free Movement, 18th January 2016

Source: www.freemovement.org.uk

Refusal of citizenship to wife and children of Islamist extremist declared unlawful – Free Movement

Posted December 8th, 2015 in citizenship, families, good character, news by sally

‘The Secretary of State for the Home Department refused the citizenship applications of the wife and two minor children of an Islamist extremist on good character grounds. The refusal was justified by the Home Office as punishment by proxy which would have the effect of deterring other extremists. The High Court has declared that unlawful in the case of MM & GY & TY v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2015] EWHC 3513 (Admin).’

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Free Movement, 8th December 2015

Source: www.freemovement.org.uk

Family of hate preacher linked to ‘Jihadi John’ win right to UK citizenship – Daily Telegraph

Posted December 7th, 2015 in asylum, citizenship, deportation, families, human rights, Islam, news, ombudsmen, terrorism, United Nations by sally

‘Hani al-Sibai has been on a terror sanctions list since 2005 and resisted deportation to his native Egypt for almost 20 years – but the High Court has ruled his family should be given UK citizenship.’

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Daily Telegraph, 5th December 2015

Source: www.telegraph.co.uk

Islamist extremist’s wife and children win citizenship battle – BBC News

Posted December 4th, 2015 in citizenship, families, news, terrorism by tracey

‘The wife and children of an Islamist extremist linked to al-Qaeda have won a legal battle against the Home Secretary’s refusal to grant them UK citizenship.’

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BBC News, 3rd December 2015

Source: www.bbc.co.uk

Regina (Hysaj and others) v Secretary of State for the Home Department – WLR Daily

Posted November 30th, 2015 in citizenship, fraud, impersonation, law reports by sally

Regina (Hysaj and others) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2015] EWCA Civ 1195; [2015] WLR (D) 482

‘In a case of impersonation where a person had fraudulently made false representations about his own identity and that fraud was material to the grant of naturalisation, the grant of nationality was a nullity.’

WLR Daily, 26th November 2015

Source: www.iclr.co.uk

Approach of Home Office to nationality case “astonishing and grotesque” rules High Court – Free Movement

Posted October 16th, 2015 in citizenship, DNA, government departments, India, news, paternity by sally

‘The case is R (Bondada) v Secretary of State for the Home Department [2015] EWHC 2661 (Admin), a challenge to a refusal by British officials to recognise the British citizenship of a lady who was a survivor of domestic violence looking to rebuild her life.’

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Free Movement, 16th October 2015

Source: www.freemovement.org.uk

Judge attacks government’s ‘grotesque’ conduct in denying woman UK passport – The Guardian

Posted October 16th, 2015 in citizenship, DNA, government departments, India, news, paternity by sally

‘The government tried to deny a passport to the daughter of a British citizen in conduct described as “grotesque” by a high court judge.’

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The Guardian, 15th October 2015

Source: www.guardian.co.uk

Short Cuts: Sadakat Kadri – London Review of Books

Posted June 11th, 2015 in citizenship, news by sally

‘The removal of citizenship has been used as a penalty for disloyalty only rarely in Britain. A handful of spies with dual nationality were denaturalised during the Cold War, but the last case in the 20th century was in 1973. Change came slowly even after 9/11: only five people were stripped of British citizenship by Labour home secretaries, and the emblematic bogeyman of the era, the hook-handed Abu Hamza, repeatedly dodged moves to annul the Britishness he had gained through marriage. He didn’t manage to elude extradition to the United States, where he has now been jailed for life, but for what it’s worth, he remains notionally a British subject.’

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London Review of Books, 18th June 2015

Source: www.lrb.co.uk

Prisons built to expel – OUP Blog

Posted May 26th, 2015 in citizenship, deportation, immigration, news, prisons by sally

‘Every few months, a new report announces the breakdown of the British immigration system. In January, the Committee of Public Accounts issued a searing review of the Home Office’s migration policy. Three months earlier, the National Audit Office released a near-identical critique. Each publication invokes a now-familiar folk devil – the ‘foreign criminal’ – ­­and demands better coordination between immigration enforcers and prison managers. Four times a year, we are told that governments that do not deport ‘foreign offenders’ are fundamentally unfit.’

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OUP Blog, 26th May 2015

Source: http://blog.oup.com

Pham (Appellant) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (Respondent) – Supreme Court

Posted April 14th, 2015 in appeals, citizenship, EC law, immigration, law reports, ministers' powers and duties, proportionality, Supreme Court by sally

Pham (Appellant) v Secretary of State for the Home Department (Respondent) [2015] UKSC 19 (YouTube)

Supreme Court, 25th March 2015

Source: www.youtube.com/user/UKSupremeCourt

The Round-up: Black Spiders and Superhero Jurisdictions – UK Human Rights Blog

Posted April 10th, 2015 in asylum, citizenship, homosexuality, immigration, mental health, news by tracey

‘Hannah Lynes brings us the latest edition of the Human Rights Round-up.’

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UK Human Rights Blog, 7th April 2015

Source: www.ukhumanrightsblog.com

Pham v Secretary of State for the Home Department (Open Society Justice Initiative intervening) – WLR Daily

Posted April 8th, 2015 in appeals, citizenship, EC law, immigration, judicial review, law reports, proportionality, Supreme Court, terrorism, Vietnam by sally

Pham v Secretary of State for the Home Department (Open Society Justice Initiative intervening) [2015] UKSC 19; [2015] WLR (D) 166

‘The question whether a person was not considered as a national by a state under the operation of its law, with the effect that he would be stateless if deprived of British citizenship, was not necessarily to be decided solely by reference to the text of the nationality legislation of the state in question, and reference might also be made to the practice of the government, even if not subject to effective challenge in the courts.’

WLR Daily, 25th March 2015

Source: www.iclr.co.uk

The Supreme Court on statelessness, EU citizenship and proportionality – UK Human Rights Blog

Posted April 2nd, 2015 in appeals, citizenship, EC law, human rights, news, proportionality, Supreme Court, treaties by sally

‘On first glance, this was not a judgment about human rights. It concerned the definition of statelessness under article 1(1) of the 1954 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons, and raised issues of competence and jurisdiction in relation to EU citizenship. Its specific interest for human rights lawyers lies primarily in the observations about the principle of proportionality; and in where the case, which most certainly does raise human rights issues, is likely to go next.

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UK Human Rights Blog, 31st March 2015

Source: www.ukhumanrightsblog.com

FAS v Bradford Metropolitan District Council and another – WLR Daily

Posted March 23rd, 2015 in adoption, children, citizenship, family courts, immigration, law reports by sally

FAS v Bradford Metropolitan District Council and another [2015] EWHC 622 (Fam); [2015] WLR (D) 128

‘It remained the case that the court would rarely make an adoption order when it would confer no benefits upon the child during its childhood but gave it a right of abode for the rest of its life. The proposition to that effect in In re B (A Minor) (Adoption Order: Nationality) [1999] 2 AC 136, 141–142, decided in the context of section 6 of the Adoption Act 1976 and the need to promote and safeguard the welfare of the child “throughout his childhood”, still applied despite the change in the welfare test effected by the Adoption and Children Act 2002, which now provided that the paramount (as opposed to the first) consideration was the child’s welfare “throughout his life”. Thus, where the court was in effect being asked to use adoption to confer citizenship prospectively upon an adult the courts were reluctant to trespass upon the area of the Home Secretary’s authority entrusted to him by Parliament.’

WLR Daily, 13th March 2015

Source: www.iclr.co.uk

Zambrano carers and social assistance – NearlyLegal

Posted February 16th, 2015 in appeals, benefits, carers, citizenship, EC law, equality, homelessness, housing, human rights, news by sally

‘There must be times when Court of Appeal judges think that they have bit parts in an ongoing drama – they have a walk on role. And that must be how the Court felt in Sanneh v SSWP and others [2015] EWCA Civ 49, which concerns the eligibility rules for Zambrano carers of a raft of social assistance benefits. Leading QCs and junior barristers appeared on all sides in a right ding dong that is bound to end up at the Supreme Court, which almost certainly will refer the issues to the CJEU. It also provides a glimpse of how the recent, potentially contradictory, judgments of the CJEU in Brey and Dano are, or might be, treated (although it looks like the UKSC will have the next bite of those rather earlier, in the Mirga and Samin appeals in March) and the question of the ambit of “social assistance”, which in itself is not uninteresting, is also raised, but parked by the CA, in these appeals ([84] – note: this is an important point for the future).’

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NearlyLegal, 12th February 2015

Source: www.nearlylegal.co.uk

Landlords shunning foreigners because of their accents, after new rules preventing illegal migrants from renting – The Independent

Posted February 16th, 2015 in birth certificates, citizenship, equality, housing, immigration, landlord & tenant, news, passports by sally

‘Landlords are preparing to turn away tenants just because they have a foreign accent, as a consequence of new rules making it an offence to let rooms to illegal migrants.’

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The Independent, 15th February 2015

Source: www.independent.co.uk

Spouse migration rules ‘unfair’ to UK citizens, admits minister – BBC News

Posted February 11th, 2015 in citizenship, families, immigration, married persons, news, visas by sally

‘Home Office Minister James Brokenshire has admitted UK-born citizens who want to bring their spouses into the UK from outside the EU are getting a raw deal.’

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BBC News, 10th February 2015

Source: www.bbc.co.uk

Hayley Hooper: The Counter Terrorism and Security Bill: A Potential Further Erosion of Citizenship Rights in the UK – UK Constitutional Law Association

Posted January 29th, 2015 in bills, citizenship, human rights, news, passports, terrorism by sally

‘The Counter Terrorism and Security Bill was introduced into the House of Commons on 7 January 2015 using a semi-fast-track procedure. The Bill provides for new powers to seize travel documents from individuals suspected of terrorism, for increased powers to retain internet data under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIPA), and more intrusive measures under the Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures Act 2011. This comment focuses on one aspect of the Bill: the “temporary exclusion orders” (TEOs) proposed in Chapter Two. These TEOs would allow the Home Secretary to make an executive order to invalidate an individual’s passport whilst s/he is abroad if there is “reasonable suspicion” that s/he has been involved in terrorism or terrorism related activity outside of the United Kingdom. Such orders may remain in force for up to two years. This means that affected individuals can only return to the UK if they become the subject of a “managed return” during which they may be subject to conditions consistent with obligations in the existing Terrorism Prevention and Investigation Measures Act.’

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UK Constitutional Law Association, 27th Janaury 2015

Source: www.ukconstitutionallaw.org

Good character citizenship criteria quietly tightened up – Free Movement

Posted January 9th, 2015 in citizenship, immigration, news, refugees by sally

‘The Home Office has quietly tightened up the criteria for granting British citizenship under the good character test. This had passed me by so I thought it useful to flag up – and many thanks to Alex Moran for point it out. A number of undesirable behaviours have been added to the list of disqualifying behaviour, including illegal entry, assisting illegal migration and evasion of immigration control. The changes seem to have been made on 11 December 2014. The previous version of the guidance can be seen here and the new version here.’

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Free Movement, 8th January 2015

Source: www.freemovement.org.uk

Regina (Hysaj) v Secretary of State for the Home Department; Fathollahipour v Aliabadibenisi; May v Robinson – WLR Daily

Posted December 19th, 2014 in appeals, citizenship, civil procedure rules, delay, law reports, litigants in person, time limits by sally

Regina (Hysaj) v Secretary of State for the Home Department; Fathollahipour v Aliabadibenisi; May v Robinson [2014] EWCA Civ 1633; [2014] WLR (D) 538

‘The approach to applications for extensions of time for filing a notice of appeal should be the same as for applications for relief from sanctions and should attract the same rigorous approach.’

WLR Daily, 16th December 2014

Source: www.iclr.co.uk