Summer of '25 — Immigration, family separation and the ECHR

The summer of 2025 has been dominated by coverage of asylum hotel protests and housing crises in local authorities across the UK, writes Andy Sirel, legal director of JustRight Scotland.

Of course, these housing crises have been in place for many years, pre-dating the current anti-refugee narrative.

Immigration practitioners will also tell you that small boat crossings – which, to be clear, must stop for all sorts of different reasons – made up just 3.9% of immigration into the UK in 2024. However, barely a week goes by where a member of the UK Government isn’t announcing another migration plan, policy or assurance to the public (or certain media outlets).

One such policy was the suspension of Refugee Family Reunion (RFR) on 4 September 2025.  RFR was one of the only safe and legal routes to the UK. It allowed a recognised refugee in the UK to make an application for their spouse and/or children to join them. Over the past decade, 92% of those granted a visa through this scheme were women and children.

Losing safe passage

RFR has been a cornerstone of modern refugee systems in Europe. It helps refugees integrate, establish new and productive lives, and enables an element of state control over migration. If you can access a safe legal visa route like RFR, you are less likely to fall victim to smugglers, traffickers and irregular migration routes.

From 4 September 2025 until at least March 2026, refugees seeking RFR in the UK are expected to earn £29,000/year and pay around £4,500 per application, and their spouses have to pass an English exam at an approved centre. For context, refugees in the UK have typically been kept in the asylum system for months or even years, without the ability to work, and in receipt of either £1.42 or £7.02 per day.

At JustRight Scotland, we are helping people overseas apply for RFR who have fled or are still in Sudan or Gaza. They are in the most dangerous places on Earth; they have no opportunity to study and pass an English exam. In practice, therefore, the visa route has effectively been ended. It remains to be seen what the rules will look like after March 2026, but they will undoubtedly be even more restrictive than those pre-September 2025.

Is this lawful? That is debatable; the suspension will almost certainly be challenged in the courts. What will it achieve? It does not address the root causes of the current housing crisis. It is arguable (perhaps logical) that closing down one of the last safe and legal routes to the UK will increase irregular migration, pushing desperate people towards smugglers.

In the meantime, it remains the great UK asylum paradox that you must be in the UK to seek asylum legally, but you cannot legally enter to seek asylum.

Defending human rights

This move must also be seen through the broader lens of an incoming assault on the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR), with control on immigration as the justification.

The right to respect for family life is protected by Article 8 of the ECHR. It is an essential tool for solicitors seeking to reunite families torn apart by conflict. The existing Immigration Rules on RFR are limited only to pre-flight spouses and children of refugees, so Article 8 is vital to help with cases of different family members.

In our work, this looks like a young woman in the UK seeking reunification with her two child brothers displaced, alone, in east Africa. Or a Sudanese-British dual national who fled Sudan – the world’s deadliest current war – seeking reunification with his Sudanese wife. The Home Office initially refused both these cases but relented after Article 8 ECHR challenges in the courts.

In addition to suspending RFR for spouses and children, the UK Government has set out in its White Paper that it will tighten what ‘exceptional circumstances’ means in the context of family life and Article 8 ECHR. Once more, the Government is attempting to codify, and dilute, rights and freedoms contained in the ECHR.

Families at risk

We recently worked with a Palestinian family who successfully reunited with their daughter and sister in the UK. They had fled genocide in Gaza. The courts agreed that there were ‘exceptional circumstances’ in the case, and in refusing the visas the Home Office violated Article 8 ECHR. The Home Office appealed the case to the Upper Tribunal, as it has done with all such cases from Gaza, but were in this instance rebuffed.

It is striking that the UK Government was simultaneously condemning the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, recognising Palestinian statehood, yet seeking all legal recourse to prevent Gazan survivors from reuniting with family in the UK.

If Article 8 ECHR is diluted, cases like this may not succeed. That can only be the underlying intention. Families will remain separated.

On the 75th anniversary of the ECHR, the UK Government seeks to weaken the force of the Convention. Its opponents seek a withdrawal from the Council of Europe in its entirety. Diluting rights for anyone dilutes them for everyone. We must stand to defend the foundation of our modern human rights protections, and the marginalised people who need it most.