The unravelling of 'administrative justice' in immigration and asylum

Since the 70’s UK immigration law and procedure have changed significantly. Recent changes have limited the categories under which people may enter or remain in the UK, and, by way of procedural and other policy changes, made it more difficult for people to make applications or challenge refusals. Rights of appeal and access to appellate tribunals and courts have been reduced and even abolished. Application fees have increased and fees introduced for appeals. Because of the specific ways in which procedures and controls affecting migrants are delivered, access to appeals and public law remedies have become less effective. The specific statuses granted to migrants have been limited, and ‘routes’ to settlement and citizenship have been lengthened and for some categories excluded altogether. Migrants accepted into ‘routes’ to settlement face ever longer periods legally defined as ‘precarious’ before acquiring permanent residence. These changes have served to distance those migrants, and the processes to which they are subject, from standard norms of public administration. This paper explores aspects of immigration control contracted out to private bodies, and procedures in which private bodies and individuals are recruited to carry out immigration checks, in order to examine the nature of that distancing, and consider to what extent the rule of law can be said to apply in this new world in which the migrant is less and less a party to legal operations affecting them.