On the 6^th of April 2022, the Home Office increased some of the fees for settlement, residence, nationality, visit, study, and work visas.

One of the underlying principles in UK law is that children’s safeguards and wellbeing must be at the forefront of any government decision. This is clearly protected under section 55 of the Borders and Citizenship Immigration Act 2009 and is known by the term ‘Best Interests of the Child‘ principle.

Best Interests of the Child Principle

Under immigration law and the implementation of the Best Interests of the Child’ principle, children’s interests must be the primary consideration (although not the sole consideration) for the Home Office when considering any actions that may affect children. This approach is enshrined in law by a case called ZH (Tanzania).

The government has now announced the introduction of The Ukrainian Family Scheme; this is in addition to the concessions under the Family Migration Visa, which were announced on the 27^th of February 2022 and allowed certain Ukrainians to come and stay in the UK. We covered these concessions in our previous blog post. The number of people covered under the initial concessions was quite limited and the government has faced pressure to do more, especially as other European nations are allowing many more Ukraine nationals to enter.

Following this pressure, on the 1^st of March, the government announced that they would be expanding the Ukrainian Humanitarian Route. There are two parts to this, the Ukrainian Family Scheme, which allows British nationals and settled people in the UK to invite their family members, and a local sponsorship scheme, which allows UK residents to sponsor families or individuals to come to the UK.

As the humanitarian situation in Ukraine worsens, the UK government has recently (on the 27^th of February 2022) published guidance in response to the call for humanitarian help, by allowing certain Ukrainians to come and stay in the UK.

The Ukrinane Abroad Concession

Unfortunately, this concession only covers a very limited group of people and does not create any new visas that didn’t exist prior to this crisis. It allows Ukranian family members of British nationals to apply for a family migration visa, free of charge, if the British national usually lives in Ukraine.