Silly season

I’m going to be away for a while and will begin posting again at the beginning of September. In the meantime, I hope you all have a good summer!

Blog news

Following a comment on the comments system, I thought I better do a quick update. Firstly, I’ve been very busy recently and as a result have not been posting as frequently or extensively as normal. This is inevitable, I’m afraid, and given that there are so many email subscribers (115 at last count, after I purged a few dormant ones) I would rather try to avoid ‘fillers’.

There is still a lot going on out there (or sometimes not, which is itself worthy of comment) and I’m planning a proper post for later today if I can make time.

As to the new comments system, WordPress have introduced a new feature which permits what is called ‘nesting’ of comments. This enables reply to a particular comment, which I thought might be useful on this blog. I’ve also reversed the order of comments, so that the most recent comments appear at the top of the list. I think this is an improvement as it avoids a lot of scrolling, although obviously at the expense of normal chronology.

Comments on useability welcome. There was no way not to make these changes retrospective and on the couple of old posts I looked at the nesting seemed mainly to work.

P.S. I looked for a stocking filler image for this post, but the results didn’t seem suitable.

Free Movement is back

But lacks the energy to write anything intelligent. Par for the course, some might claim. I have however been deleting the many comments I now unfortunately receive asking for legal advice. Inevitable, I suppose. Instead of informed, witty, incisive commentary I shall content myself with some random alerts:

• Metock guidance is finally available. The Entry Clearance Guidance has been amended at chapter 21 and the European Casework Instructions have been amended at chapters 1, 2, 3 and 5. I haven’t managed to scan in Operational Policy Instruction 103, which came with the January ILPA mailing and as far as I know doesn’t yet exist on the internet. Analysis to follow, maybe.
• Still no news on Baiai or on RN (Zimbabwe).
• Woolas’ ramblings on cutting back on judicial review have been revealed as hot air. There’s a new policy not to automatically suspend removals where exactly the same grounds are relied on within three months of the last ones. I know there are some chancers out there but I can’t imagine there are many example of this and even Lin Homer has said she doesn’t think many cases will be affected.
• Free Movement is considering a loose tie-in with HJT Training to help pay the actual and virtual rent. Perhaps a page on the top bar next to ‘Archives’. I’ve attended their courses before and would in fact be happy to endorse them. Thoughts on selling out (selling out what exactly?) etc sort of welcome.

Free Movement is away

After a long day in court fighting a losing battle and with plenty of work still to do before Christmas, Free Movement is signing off until well into the New Year.

I’m knackered and need a break.

A number of fellow immigration lawyers have commented that it is always busy around Christmas. The Immigration Service does seem to have a tendency to schedule removals for public holidays, when pesky lawyers will be less able to intervene to safeguard people’s rights.

A few changes to the blog

I’ve decided to make a few changes to the blog, which I hope are improvements. Comments from regular readers most welcome. Incidentally, I checked Feedburner recently and was surprised to see there are 62 of you out there who subscribe by email. A bit of a ‘hello Mum!’ moment for me, but I hope you find this useful.

I’ve changed the ‘theme’, which is the pre-set format for the site. I’m not clever enough to design my own, and I do still have a life outside blogging. Free Movement now has three columns instead of two, and on the left hand column I have inserted two new update tools for readers. One is a compilation of immigration news from various news websites. The other is a list of recent immigration cases sourced from BAILII. Most will be profoundly uninterested in how this is done, but the boxes on the blog will automatically update themselves. I hope. The feeds behind them were created using Yahoo Pipes and those who are interested can subscribe to these feeds directly if they want to by clicking on the RSS icons on the blog.

The news is compiled from UKBA, the Beeb, The Guardian (of course!), The Indy, The Times and The Telegraph. It is filtered only to include articles which mention certain words, so it should include most if not all immigration stories. When there is a big story on, the stories in the box will be a bit repetitive, but it is always interesting to compare and contrast the coverage! I may change the sources and number of stories displayed once I’ve seen how well or otherwise this works over the next few days.

The cases are filtered in a similar way, so it is only Asylum and Immigration Tribunal cases plus other cases in other courts where the Secretary of State for the Home Department or Asylum and Immigration Tribunal is a party. That is most if not all immigration cases, but some non immigration cases will sometimes creep in.

I’ve had to lose the masthead, which was a picture of some asylum seekers playing football in the snow at Oakington Reception Centre one winter. It means the blog is even more text-heavy than before, but there’s not much that can be done about that.

Let me know what you think, and please tell me if there any problems or omissions.

EU case law

Via a comment left on this site, I’ve been made aware of an excellent blog called EU Case Law, which I’ve added to my ‘blogroll’. It’s a really good way of keeping up to date with the latest legal developments in Europe and certainly covers free movement issues, as today’s update makes abundantly clear. It isn’t a specific immigration site, but it nevertheless looks invaluable to immigration lawyers.