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Asylum Aid is challenging the Home Office’s changes in Immigration Rules which, with effect from 31 January 2024, make it significantly harder for stateless people to reunite with their families. These changes mean that stateless people’s partners and children now must meet more stringent financial and evidential requirements for leave to enter or remain in the UK than before. Many stateless people and their families will find impossible to meet these requirements in practice.

Stateless people are not considered as a national by any State under the operation of its laws, and many have no right to live in any other country. Prior to the introduction of these new rules, people recognised as stateless were able to sponsor their family members’ applications to enter or remain in the UK and simply required proof of the family relationship with the stateless person.

The Home Secretary has herself accepted that a significant number of family members of stateless people will not meet the core requirements under the new Rules. Stateless people are a particularly vulnerable and disadvantaged group, and this change in policy will have a detrimental impact on them.

Since the changes in the Immigration Rules, families of stateless people now have to meet the same financial and evidential requirements as the family members of British citizens – or meet a stringent ‘exceptional circumstances’ test - if they want to join or remain with them in the UK. Family members of stateless people are subject to rules such as the minimum income threshold (which currently stands at £29,000) and prohibitive application fees (currently £1,846 for applications from outside the UK and £1,258 for applications in the UK), and the Immigration Health Surcharge (£1,035 per person per year). Yet, stateless people and their families are often in a very different position to British citizens and their families: they are unlikely to be able to meet the high income thresholds and fees, and securing waivers involves further complex, time and resource consuming applications.

Asylum Aid is challenging the change in the Rules on multiple grounds, including that they were introduced without adequate consideration of their discriminatory adverse impacts on stateless people and that they are irrational. The challenge also argues that the new Rules are contrary to the UK’s international law obligations to stateless people; they were implemented in contravention of the Home Secretary’s domestic law obligations; and are unfair and unjust to a group of people who are particularly disadvantaged.

Note: the hearing in the High Court for this case is taking place on 21-23 January 2025

Alison Pickup, Executive Director of Asylum Aid, said:

“Stateless people are often invisible. They have no documents, no rights, and no state protection, which takes a huge toll on their mental health and denies them a meaningful life.  They cannot work, marry, study, open a bank account or drive; they cannot live in any meaningful way. They are especially vulnerable to trafficking and exploitation. Statelessness can result in the, often prolonged and harmful, separation of families if some members are unable to obtain citizenship or legal residency status.

The changes in the family reunion rules push an already disadvantaged group of people further into despair. The previous rules facilitated family reunion for stateless families and should be restored.”

For more information on statelessness and the barriers to recognition and protection faced by stateless people the UK, read this joint briefing by Asylum Aid, University of Liverpool Law Clinic, JustRight Scotland, European Network on Statelessness and Jesuit Refugee Service: ‘Stateless people in the UK: At risk of legal limbo, in need of protection’.

Note to Editors:

Asylum Aid was instrumental in the development of a statelessness determination procedure in the UK which gives stateless people an opportunity to regularise their status and to ultimately gain citizenship. It was implemented in 2013 and incorporated into Appendix Statelessness on 31 January 2024. 

We are one of only a small number of organisations in the UK that specialise in this area of law and offer free representation, as there is usually no legal aid for applications on grounds of statelessness in England and Wales.

Asylum Aid is represented by Freshfields LLP (acting pro bono) and by Stephanie Harrison KC, Ronan Toal and Emma Fitzsimmons of Garden Court Chambers.

The claim is supported by evidence from the University of Liverpool Law Clinic and Islington Law Centre.