Why this old art graduate advises on immigration and why he continues to do it! :)

My first exposure to the world of immigration was opening up an email attachment of a poorly scanned visit visa refusal emailed to me by a despairing family member. The template for a visa refusal hasn’t changed much over the years. Once I even received the first couple of pages of one client’s refusal that had another applicant’s refusal in the last few pages. The caseworker hadn’t changed the name from the template he had used previously. The formula is: the visa has been refused, this is what you told us, here is the law (in brief) and this is why that means the visa has been refused. It was that little snippet of the immigration rules was my first glimmer of hope - instead of assuming that the caseworker had applied the law correctly - what if they hadn’t?

I sought professional advice at that time, but felt condescended and the fee priced me out of even considering their support.

Those were days when a visit visa could be appealed, and normally, just the submission of an appeal was enough for the Home Office to reassess the application (and avoid the embarrassment of a tribunal loss). I was appealing against a visit visa refusal which carried with it a 10 year restriction from applying again for a visit visa. At this point I usually add that the appeal was being made on behalf of my then mother-in-law and there is much merriment over having a mother-in-law banned from entering the country for ten years!

The appeal went to a tribunal, where I put on my wedding suit, which no longer buttoned up over my married torso, and trembled my way into battle. My first tribunal experience was a shock. As an outsider to the system, if felt like that the Home Office presenting officer and the immigration judge were in a private conversation discussing the appeal. I was in a witness in this case, and in absence of the appellant or a representative, I understand this to a degree, but since the appellant was out of country and couldn’t afford a representative, it felt incredibly unbalanced. I felt my heart beating in every part of my head as I made my statement to the tribunal. Weeks later I received the appeal decision, and the relief seemed to rise from my body like steam into the air.

My reflection was that this system wasn’t fair since not everyone who received a refusal had a family member who could analyse the language of the immigration rules or could afford a representative. This was the catalyst for me fighting for the career that I have today. I advised at my local Citizens Advice Bureau for a while before seeing where the immigration referrals were heading - an immigration adviser working on his own in a tiny office that had once been a public toilet. With my hat in my hand, I entered that office to offer my services to him. I worked full-time and ran to this office in my free moments between work and nursery drop offs to sit at a computer drafting grounds of appeal against removal and deportation, which I did for free for about two years. Every evening, I read immigration law online whilst my wife and child slept.

I’m reflecting on this now after exactly 12 years of advising on immigration. 12 years, 7 law firms, countless numbers of clients… I’ve advised in boutique immigration law firms, huge big-4 accountancy firms and I’ve been the only immigration adviser in large international law firms. Now I have the privilege again of deciding the services that I would like to offer and the practice I’d like to develop and thinking about myself as that client once again and thinking of advice that is for me more than anyone to hear, but hopefully others can take something from it too.

• Listen: it seems obvious, but advisers can often enjoy the sound of their own voice and we’re all short of time that we can literally see tick away on timers on our screens all day. It’s important to understand why a person is seeking advice, their aims and what concerns them. It sometimes costs you a client to tell someone not to pursue something, but you’ve given the right advice.
• Provide options: Every client has options, there are just often many steps to take first. Speak your ideas out loud and walk through each option even if they come to a dead end - at least you can explain why an option isn’t an option.
• Speak simply: if an old art graduate can understand immigration law, I am sure many people can, but understand that for most of our clients, English is at least a second language and law is an obtuse language all to itself. I’ve found most client consultations focus on the practicalities of making an application and mapping out steps. I always found that clients benefited from seeing things drawn on paper too.
• Your expertise is experience: knowing where to look, how to gain knowledge on something that you might not have been expert on before, knowing not only what is written down but how it is applied… this is the value an adviser can offer. For example, don’t appeal, apply again but with a different application - this advice often saves people not only time but money too.
• Learn from others: I learnt so much from refusals - not just mine but others around me. I also learnt that horrible feeling from seeing a visa refused and keeping that feeling in the back of my head before any application is submitted. Visa applications are also about they ‘how, when and where’ and so sharing experiences with making particular applications is key.

It really helped me to write this all down - to reflect on how I get to where I am and where I’d like to go. I have some news to share on my next opportunity next week and I’m feeling excited to get started.