Immigration news

According to a report published by The Guardian, EU citizens are being offered financial incentives to leave the UK. The report claims that EU nationals are being added to a voluntary returns scheme with the Home Office offering to cover the cost of flights and hand out £2,000 for resettlement.

 

The news comes with just over three months to the deadline for EU citizens to apply for UK settled status under the EU Settlement Scheme. Since 1 January, EU citizens have quietly been added to the voluntary returns scheme.

The Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI) has warned that thousands of EU care workers in Britain risk being criminalised and losing their UK immigration status. According to the JCWI, there is a ‘lack of knowledge’ about the EU Settlement Scheme, which EU citizens need to apply for in order to remain in the UK after June 2021.

 

A new report published by Physicians for Human Rights (PHR) has accused US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) of ‘routinely ignoring its own COVID-19 safety rules’, resulting in significantly high infection rates across US immigration detention centers. The report states that social distancing measures are ‘impossible’ in many detention centers.

 

The Home Office has blasted prosecutors for applying the law in UK immigration cases, according to the chief of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). Max Hill QC claims that the government has ‘repeatedly criticised’ prosecutors for simply applying the law. 

 

Mr Hill, the director of public prosecutions, recently defended rulings made for two UK immigration cases which reportedly irked Home Secretary, Priti Patel, who is trying to crackdown on irregular travel Britain.

The Census Bureau has announced that an executive order issued by Joe Biden means that data in the 2020 US Census will exclude information on citizenship and immigration. The agency has paused work on a project initiated by former US President, Donald Trump, to gather data on US immigration status.

 

Amid attempts to exclude undocumented immigrants from the Census count, the Trump administration sought to add a US citizenship question to the decennial Census. The move was blocked by the Supreme Court in 2019.

A lawyer for the US Department of Justice (DoJ) recently announced that Trump’s renewed US work visa ban would ‘remain for now’. The lawyer told a federal judge in San Francisco: “The DoJ will continue to defend former President Trump’s ban on many visa holders entering the US amid COVID-19 until it is withdrawn by President Joe Biden.”