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
We have published an information page on studying, ‘no study’ conditions and immigration bail. In January 2018, changes were made to the law regarding immigration bail. Anyone without leave to remain to enter will be subject to immigration bail. This includes asylum seekers, unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, undocumented children and young people and care leavers without…
CCLC recently collaborated with the Youth Justice Legal Centre (‘YJLC’) and others on a guide about ‘county lines’ and trafficking. This new YJLC guide is intended to give criminal lawyers and professionals information about county lines gangs, child trafficking & modern slavery defences for children. County lines, trafficking & child criminal exploitation (CCE) County lines is “the…
Today’s report from the Home Affairs Committee raises serious concerns about how the immigration system will cope with the changes brought by Brexit and criticises the continued uncertainty over the status of EU nationals. Uncertainty for EEA nationals The process of registering the status of the three million EEA nationals who are resident in the…
Exactly one year after it was promised by the then ministers for immigration and children, the government published its safeguarding strategy for unaccompanied children on 1 November. The strategy’s introductory and welcome message is that refugee and migrant children are children first and foremost, and must not be defined by their immigration status. It makes…
Today the Department for Education and the Home Office jointly published a new safeguarding strategy for unaccompanied asylum-seeking and refugee children, and revised statutory guidance for local authorities on the care of these children.