With less than a week to go before the deadline for applications to the EU settlement scheme, Coram Children’s Legal Centre is concerned that not all eligible children have applied. Applications from children have not yet met the numbers estimated to be needed in 2018, even though the number of applications overall has significantly outstripped…
A new study by the University of Wolverhampton has estimated that over 215,000 children are growing up in the UK without any formal immigration status. Some arrived in the UK as children and over half were born in the UK. Without their papers, children can access basic healthcare and go to school, but once they…
Today’s Times carries a major investigation into the huge profits made by the Home Office under the current system requiring undocumented young people to pay thousands of pounds seeking to regularise their status in the UK. The piece includes analysis by Marianne Lagrue, Policy Manager in Coram Children’s Legal Centre (CCLC) who describes the system as ‘a…
After many years of concerns being raised by NGOs working with asylum seekers, the Home Office has significantly revised its age assessment guidance following a Court of Appeal finding that its policy regarding age disputes was unlawful. Age disputes are a significant problem facing young migrants. Many children seeking protection in the UK are unable…
Coram Children’s Legal Centre (CCLC) has today welcomed this week’s judgment from the Court of Appeal finding Home Office policy regarding young asylum seekers and age disputes to be unlawful. Age disputes are a significant problem facing young migrants and Kamena Dorling of CCLC, as co-chair of the Refugee and Migrant Children’s Consortium, provided a…
In a major win for campaigning organisations, the Home Office will not be raising most immigration and nationality fees for the 2019/20 financial year. The Home Office may have declined to raise fees in line with its usual practice because of the impending publication of a review of Home Office fees, due in March 2019.…
Let Us Learn and Coram Children’s Legal Centre, working together on the ‘We Belong’ campaign, welcome today’s pledge from Labour to end the current ‘rip off’ of immigration application fees by reducing them to closer reflect the actual cost price of processing applications. As noted in the speech by Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott, many…
Coram Children’s Legal Centre welcomes today’s announcement from the Ministry of Justice that immigration matters for unaccompanied and separated children in care will be brought back into the scope of legal aid. We look forward to working with the Ministry of Justice to amend the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO)…
On 3 July 2018 the Greater London Assembly published new guidance aimed at helping young Londoners to secure their citizenship or immigration status. CCLC wholeheartedly welcomes the publication of this guidance by the GLA. Support from the Mayor of London for young people with insecure immigration status – young people Sadiq Khan called ‘London’s DREAMers’…
On June 15 the Immigration Minister announced a new form of immigration status for children who came to the UK from Europe under the ‘Dubs’ amendment but who do not qualify for refugee status or humanitarian protection.
A recent report from the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration looked at the Home Office’s handling of unaccompanied children seeking asylum, and gave particular focus to how the best interests of those children are upheld when they are transferred from one local authority area to another under the National Transfer Scheme (NTS). The…
BBC Radio 4’s Today programme highlighted the plight of young people who have grown up in the UK who are subject to the hostile environment