My legal life: profile in the Law Gazette

20 April 2020

I plumped for a career in law because my mum told me to. I then sat on my bed aged 17 and read A.V. Dicey’s The Law Of The Constitution – possibly the only law book I could find in Stafford Library – from cover to cover instead of going to the pub with my friends like a normal teenager. I decided if I enjoyed a rather dry read like that I might well be cut out for law…

There is never a boring day in immigration law. And rarely a week when immigration law is not in the news. An example is the ETS English test scandal, when many students (such as the ones I represented) faced removal and interruption of their studies through no fault of their own due to an over-zealous Home Office reaction.

One of my clients was a young asylum-seeker from Iran who was offered a place at Cambridge to study medicine. He wanted to give back to the country that had fixed his heart condition and become a doctor here. The Sun editorial mentioned his case and insisted: ‘This goes to show that as we’ve said all along, this country needs a more flexible immigration policy.’ I’m not entirely sure whether The Sun have always said that all along!

The coronavirus pandemic and the overhaul of our immigration system post-Brexit provide a double-whammy of challenges for the firms I advise and for their employees. At the same time as travel is restricted amid the threat of border and visa centre closures, companies have to get their sponsor licences ready for a post-Brexit immigration regime that is due to start next January after free movement for EU nationals ends. As I said, there is never a dull moment in immigration law…