A fly on the wall: A typical day waiting at an Immigration Tribunal venue

Imagine your first time as an Appellant at an immigration Tribunal hearing venue. What would you expect? Regular refreshments of free tea and biscuits as you wait your turn to be heard by a Judge?  After all, you have paid at least £140.00 towards the Tribunal appeal fee.  Would you expect to arrive and find 20 or so people crammed in a waiting room with hardly any seating space?  What if you are overwhelmed by all this and are too nervous to approach an Usher for updates? Would you simply sit there not knowing what next to expect as the hours go by? Would you anticipate the Usher approaching and addressing you by name since they would have taken your name down from the beginning or would you expect to be addressed en masse along with the rest of the visitors?

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The inflexible Adult Dependent Relative Rules are here to stay so says the Court of Appeal

“The question is whether there is now general acceptance that these rules are here to stay as unchallengeable/unamendable….”,  so enquired  my previous blog article of October 2015 in relation to the  Rules  relating to Adult Dependent Relatives( ADR’s): Adult Dependant Relatives: Very Deliberately Onerous Rules

 

An ambitious challenge  brought   about by  BRITCITS in  BRITCITS v The Secretary of State for the Home Department [2017] EWCA Civ 368 (24 May 2017) has elicited a negative response to the question of whether the ADR Rules  can be challenged successfully with a view to striking them  down as unlawful. Rather, the Court of Appeal emphasized  disappointingly, True it is that significantly fewer dependants, including parents, will be able to satisfy the new conditions but that was always the intention”.

 

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Inbuilt obstacles and mechanisms that the Home Office use to defeat, deny and deter immigration claims

On the surface, all that is required to enable preparation and submission of a successful application to the Home Office is self-evident.  After all, the application forms themselves are free and readily accessible (postal or on-line, as relevant). These applications forms indicate what documents are required to support an application. Additionally, voluminous Home Office guidance policy is transparently available for leisurely perusal in advance of submitting an application. With all this in sight, in some categories, it seems there  isn’t even any need to consult a legal practitioner prior to submission of an application.

 

There are however in-built laws, policies and procedures in the assessment process of immigration applications, such that a seemingly straightforward application may end up falling foul of these provisions.

 

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