Asylum Act in force
01 September 1993
The Asylum and Immigration Appeals Act came fully into force at the end of July 1993 - and the first test case on the Act's provisions was heard in the High Court in September. Issues being litigated, or likely to be in the near future, include Home Office powers to certify a claim as being "without foundation"; the rights of housing authorities to provide more than temporary housing for asylum-seekers; and so-called "third country" cases. This last issue has become a live one since Amnesty International produced its report on the devastating effects on asylum-seekers of the policy, which allows the Home Office to send anyone arriving by sea back on the boat to Calais or Ostend, and anyone arriving by air from a European airport back on the plane, without looking at the asylum claim. Following the publication of the report, the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), not noted for its willingness to intervene on behalf of refugees, has suddenly declared the "third country rule" illegal and in breach of the Geneva Convention - three years after the policy was announced in parliament and the Dublin Convention was signed.
The Act is part of a package which includes new procedural and substantive rules for asylum claims. Under the new provisions, appeals against refusal of refugee status must be lodged within 10 days and heard within six weeks. If they are certified "unfounded", the time limits are 2 days and seven days respectively. This compares with an average time from refusal to appeal of a year to eighteen months before the Act came into force. The new provisions have caused chaos and confusion in the immigration appeal centres, with none of those professionally concerned - Home Office civil servants, adjudicators, or lawyers - having much idea of how the system works.
As its name indicates, in addition to provisions on asylum - criteria for deciding a claim, appeals, fingerprinting and restriction on housing provision, the Act modifies appeal rights for other immigrants - largely by removing them. The best known of these is the abolition of the right of appeal for visitors and short-term students. But others have had their appeal rights removed, without any public outcry. They include those who can't produce necessary documents such as visas, and those who want more than the rules give them. In the past, the right of appeal gave a forum to those whose circumstances called for a sympathetic approach.
Another forum abolished with the Act is the right of appeal to the High Court, against unfair decisions by the Immigration Appeal Tribunal, whose decisions are now only appealable on strict points of law. Inserted by a late amendment into a sleepy House of Lords, the provision was condemned by immigrant groups as yet another curtailment of immigrants' legal remedies, likely to result in poorer decision-making at the lower levels of the system.
Asylum and Immigration Appeals Act 1993 HMSO July 1993. Asylum Appeals (Procedure) Rules 1993 1993 No 1661 HMSO. Statement of changes in the Immigration Rules HC725 HMSO July 1993.