Unit 1: Introduction

This course is aimed at staff and volunteers from not-for-profit organisations who are working in frontline services that support migrants. This course will not tell you much about UK immigration law. Nor will it help you to register with the Immigration Advice Authority.

This course will help you to:

• Understand the importance of regulated immigration advice
• Understand the potential consequences for you and your client of giving unregulated immigration advice
• Navigate the boundary between what is immigration advice and what is not
• Support your clients to engage constructively with an immigration adviser (in Part 2)
• Identify and tackle poor immigration advice (in Part 2)

The course is divided into two modules:

1. Immigration Advice and Regulation (in this module)
2. Supporting your client to engage with their legal representative (in the next module)

To understand:

• What is immigration advice
• Why it is important
• How it is defined
• The impact of poor immigration advice
• The risks of unregulated immigration advice
• What you must not do
• How you can help

Very broadly speaking, you can divide the people who may need immigration advice into four categories, according to where they are and whether they need advice for themselves or for a family member:

For our purposes, a migrant is any non-British Citizen who has come to the UK for any reason. This covers a vast spectrum of people:

• from the very poor to the very wealthy
• from the most vulnerable to the entirely self-sufficient
• from the most law-abiding to the least

...not unlike British Citizens!

However migrants have an additional vulnerability that British Citizens do not have. The laws that deal with migration are convoluted and draconian, with harsh consequences for those who lose their status or who are in the country unlawfully. The fear of these consequences can lead to other problems. For example:

• A migrant on a partner visa might choose to remain with an abusive partner rather than risk their status being withdrawn
• A sponsored worker may put up with exploitative conditions because their status depends on their sponsoring employer
• A victim of trafficking may be reluctant to approach the authorities for fear of losing their status

The laws that govern migration to the UK to tend to pigeonhole people, often according to their purpose in coming here. There are:

• Visitors, who come to the UK for the purposes of tourism, visiting family, etc.
• Students, who come to study (and pay very large sums into our economy for the privilege)
• Workers, who come for employment, often in occupations where there are skills shortages, e.g. doctors
• Family Members of British Citizens or people who are 'settled'
• Before 1 January 2021: EEA Nationals (including Swiss nationals), for any purpose, including work, study, visiting, retirement, whimsy etc.*
• Before 1 January 2021: Family Members of EEA Nationals*
• Refugees, who flee their home country fearing persecution and seek refuge in the UK and many other countries
• Trafficking Victims, who are usually brought to the UK under the control of someone else and then forced to into work or prostitution
• Irregular Migrants, who have breached the UK's immigration laws in some way, by accident or on purpose

* The law has now changed for EEA nationals and their family members. However the changes are complex because the rights of those who were here before the law changed need to be protected. "New" EEA nationals (i.e. those who have never been to the UK and are not family members of EEA nationals who are already in the UK) are now subject to the same rules as non-EEA nationals. They will need to be visitors, students, workers etc.

1. Extreme Complexity

There is a vast body of laws that are aimed at:

• Cutting migration
• Without sabotaging the economy, or
• Breaching human rights

2. High Risk

It can be very easy to fall foul of the various rules and regulations. For example, for most people permission to be in the UK is subject to a time limit. Getting that time limit extended can be a difficult process, involving high fees and surcharges, the need to provide lots of evidence, and the likelihood of failure if you get something wrong.

3. Harsh Consequences

The consequences of breaching immigration laws are severe. Migrants who breach immigration laws:

• Commit a criminal offence
• Lose any right to work, claim benefits, rent accommodation, open bank accounts, etc.
• May face enforcement action (i.e. detention and removal)

Note: up until recently, migration has been much cheaper and easier for European Economic Area nationals, but this changed from the beginning of 2021.

There are four main ways:

• Illegal Arrival (arriving without permission or an electronic travel authorisation, where needed)
• Illegal Entry (entering the UK without permission)
• Overstaying (staying longer than is permitted)
• Breaching Conditions (doing something that is not permitted, e.g. working or studying)

All of these are criminal offences. However, it is not always easy for a migrant to avoid these offences.

In practice, prosecution for these offences is extremely rare. However there are other sanctions for irregular migrants that are very difficult to avoid.

The 'Hostile Environment' is the term for a collection of measures that are designed to:

• Make life harder for irregular migrants in the UK in order to encourage them to leave
• Discourage other migrants from coming to or remaining in the UK in breach of immigration laws

A particular feature of the Hostile Environment is that it relies on members of the public such as landlords and bank staff to make immigration checks and deny services to migrants.

The 'Hostile Environment' fell into disrepute following the Windrush scandal and was re-branded the 'Compliant Environment'. Nothing really changed, no-one was fooled and the name did not stick.

For a long time it has been illegal for for employers to employ people who do not have permission to work in the UK. The 'Immigration Acts' of 2014 and 2016 introduced a series of newer measures:

• Introducing a 'Right to Rent' that is tied to lawful immigration status
• Making illegal working a criminal offence for the migrant as well as for the employer
• Allowing earnings from illegal working to be confiscated as the proceeds of crime (if convicted of illegal working)
• Making banks carry out regular immigration checks on their customers and report to the Home Office
• Making registrars report the marriages of some migrants to the Home Office for investigation

You can find a detailed academic review of the hostile environment here.

Remember Joe? When he comes out of his coma, he will have no leave to remain. Until he can sort out his lack of permission to be in the UK:

• He will not be able to work
• He may lose his accommodation
• He will not be allowed to drive, access benefits, etc.

Luckily, Joe is fictitious and we can give him a happy ending:

What was the point of that?

• Immigration law can be complex, arbitrary and draconian
• If Joe had gotten poor advice, his current situation could be much worse

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