Taken from CAB’s Expert Advice newsletter – which you can subscribe to directly
What you need to know now
We will look at the changes to the Immigration Rules for dependents of students and asylum seekers that took effect from 17 July. We will continue to cover other changes for families, workers, Ukraine and the EU settlement scheme next week as these are not due to come into effect until 7 August.
Changes to the Immigration Rules – students
- Student dependents are further restricted. Those sponsored by a government can continue to bring dependents but otherwise it’s restricted to those on a doctorate or other research based degrees. It therefore now excludes the dependents of those students who are studying on other types of postgraduate degrees, for example, masters degrees.
- Applicants for visas in almost all work related categories who were on undergraduate student visas must have completed their courses before getting a work visa, and those on PhDs must have been studying for 2 years first. The exception is the graduate visa.
Changes to the Immigration Rules – asylum
- Changes have now been made to give effect to the scrapping of the distinction between Group 1 and Group 2 refugees
- Asylum questionnaires – There is a new paragraph 333C which treats an asylum application as implicitly withdrawn if the applicant:
- fails to keep in contact with the Home Office or provide up to date contact details, or
- fails to complete an asylum questionnaire as requested by the Home Office, or
- fails to attend any reporting events, unless they show within a reasonable time that the failure was due to circumstances beyond their control, or
- fails to attend their asylum ‘merits’ interview unless they show within a reasonable time that that failure was due to circumstances beyond their control.
The change regarding the asylum questionnaire may change… [CAB] level 1 advice to local offices who see clients with these. Additionally, level 1 advisers are allowed to do limited work on reporting events and updating contact details. Because these changes create an added risk to the applicant, local … [CAB]offices may want to exercise caution before assisting asylum seekers in these circumstances. For instance where the asylum seeker has missed a reporting event they should get level 2 advice to provide reasons to the Home Office for this.
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