UK Gay and Lesbian Immigration Group Roundtable

Wilson Solicitors was pleased to be invited to attend the UK Gay and Lesbian Immigration Group’s roundtable on LBTI Asylum reform. Other organisations in attendance included the UNHCR, Stonewall, Action for Trans Health and the Human Dignity Trust as well as barrister colleagues influential in the field.Ruth Budge, one of our trainee solicitors and a regular volunteer for UKGLIG, attended the meeting of behalf of the firm. She fed back on colleagues general experiences of the standard of decision making and appropriateness of questioning in LGB asylum claims since the publication of the Vine Report in November 2014, investigating the Home Office’s handling of LGB asylum claims.Other items on the agenda for discussion included the experiences of LGB and Trans people in immigration detention and the findings of the Shaw Review, the collapse of the Detained Fast Track, the Supreme Court’s decision in JB (Jamaica) and ‘safe country’ review, the effect of the Upper Tribunal’s recent decision in MSM Somalia ‘voluntary discretion’ and the Syria Refugee Resettlement Scheme, including a discussion of the particular vulnerabilities of LBGT Syrian asylum seekers and the difficulties involved in identifying them for resettlement.