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Simon Cox Profile picture
Simon Cox
@SimonFRCox
migration & equality, law & politics | barrister | cis he/him | @DoughtyStImm @ukraine_advice ex @osfjustice | my views obvs not doughty st | profil pic A.Wiard
@littlegravitas@c.im 🇺🇦 🇪🇺 🇮🇱 🇵🇸 #FBPE Profile picture Jay Jernigan Profile picture Hugh Sainsbury #FBPE @HughSainsbury@mastodon.green Profile picture agabibik Profile picture 4 subscribed
Jul 26, 2023 • 16 tweets • 3 min read
THREAD Why *now* for an article about crooked immigration lawyers?

Rwanda policy is in crisis and Govt need to throw mud at immigration lawyers.

This is distraction and dangerous. 1/ I’ve represented numerous victims of crooked immigration lawyers. My clients were genuine (they won in the end) but the lawyers they went to didn’t know how to prepare a real claim, they only knew how to invent a fake one. 2/
Jun 15, 2022 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
I’m a human rights lawyer, and I represented 42 Bangladeshi strawberry pickers challenging the Greek Gov in the European Court for refusing to punish the farmers who exploited them.

And I am not alone 🧵 + Image UK human rights lawyers took the Home Office to court in hundreds of successful cases when Ministers blocked legal & safe routes from Europe for refugees with family in the UK driving them into the hands of smugglers +
Apr 14, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
“UK will send asylum-seekers to Rwanda!!” is IMO:

90% “we’re tough!”propaganda to voters, Tory MPs, Patel looking in the mirror

9% almost pointless “don’t come here!” propaganda to refugees

1% immigration policy + Actual removals to Rwanda will only ever be a tiny number of UK’s refugees.

For everyone else it’s symbolic.

Patel & Johnson’s choice of symbol.
Mar 29, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
UK Home Office trails “Ukrainian Extension Scheme” to start 3 May 2022 for those with permission to stay granted before 18 Mar 2022, which is current or expired after 1 Jan 2022. No details yet. gov.uk/guidance/ukrai… Let’s hope Gov grants Ukrainians already in UK at least the same leave as those coming under Homes for Ukraine. Would be bizarre if those already here temporarily were treated worse. They can’t go home! +
Mar 10, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
160,000 people are calling on British Gov to lift visas for Ukrainian refugees. Please sign and encourage others to. petition.parliament.uk/petitions/6095… Visas aren’t for security - that’s done at U.K. Borders, as I explain here globalplayer.com/catchup/lbc/uk…
Feb 27, 2022 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Will UK *now* announce real change on Ukraine refugees? I don’t believe so - more popular pressure will be needed. Short 🧵 theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/f… Current position is - tiny concessions for Ukrainians with close family in UK - none for others. +
Feb 26, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Calling Ukrainians arriving at UK borders without a long-term UK visa! If you have any problems at immigration control, and you don’t have/ can’t get a lawyer, my DMs are open this weekend. Me & colleagues will find you a lawyer to help you stay in the UK til it’s safe to leave. I hope UK immigration officials will show you the kindness and solidarity you deserve. I know many will. My tweet is just in case.
Feb 23, 2022 • 15 tweets • 4 min read
I have a story about this from when I started out as a lawyer. 🧵 As a trainee barrister - a “pupil” - I was sent to the magistrates court to represent defendants. Interim hearings - which level of court should hear the case - or some procedural issue.
Feb 8, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
classical liberal here using “icky” as her moral guide I can also make myself queasy thinking about what some adults choose to do to / with their bodies.

But then I remind myself that a person’s icky is rooted in their personal culture, taste, history. It’s a deceptively unreliable basis for moral or political decisions.
Feb 7, 2022 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
this exchange between the wacky liars running my country reminds me of one of the strangest asylum appeal hearings I did.🧵 1/ My client’s case for refugee status was that he had been a fighter in a long running civil war. The Home Office didn’t believe him for their usual reason of supposed discrepancies between different interviews and statements.
Jan 16, 2022 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
TIL Franz Kafka spent 14 years employed in the Austrian Workmen’s Accident Insurance Institute in Prague; a pioneering official using state powers to protect & compensate injured workers. thenation.com/article/archiv… this has brought me closer to Franz
Jan 12, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Djokovic’s case *should* provoke outrage: people can be imprisoned indefinitely, denied moving around *on a whim* & have no real remedy?

But we debate how this normality should be applied to a special person.

What abt everyone else? Especially ppl from non-white-coded states. This was not the exercise of a pandemic-prevention power of isolation. It was border control. The silence on such extreme executive power over the bodies of humans is troubling.

But not surprising. Australian Govs of all parties have used it.
Jan 12, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
the problem isn’t Boris. It’s how hundreds of politicians, civil servants, police officers, the media, who claim to uphold the law and the truth watched *in silence* while hundreds of them broke the law

That system is just as open to abuse by Gove or Patel. + Johnson has shown us that UK’s political system could not (so far) keep its standards and constrain a shameless liar willing to push colleagues into complicity.

How would it cope with a *competent* sociopathic autocrat PM? +
Dec 29, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
normally welcome recourse to courts by ppl saying vaccine passports illegal - cos shows commitment to democratic institutions.

But International Criminal Court such an absurd choice - compared to European Court of Human Rights - that this looks pure stuntery. + + anyone can write to the ICC prosecutor. It’s not a formal legal process. Which is generally good, but here signifies that it’s being chosen to avoid the scrutiny a case would get in British or European courts +
Dec 23, 2021 • 15 tweets • 6 min read
Electronic tagging in UK for asylum-seekers?

Home Office Anon tells Sun its the cheap, easy answer to stop Channel crossings.

Tl;dr that claim is bogus - but lays the ground for massive extension of the surveillance state.

THREAD 1/ 125,000 asylum-seekers in UK. Application numbers historically low, but pending claims high because Home Office officials refuse to decide cases, procrastinating for years instead of issuing permits to refugees & others they can’t remove. commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-brief… 2/
Dec 22, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Edgy comedians like Bernard Manning had completely lost the crowd 20+ years ago Shot, chaser.
Dec 22, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I first met Laura when she came up to me at court and said “I’m going to be your pupil” (barrister). And I said “but we haven’t decided who your supervisor will b…” and she was like “ok, but it’s going to be you”. And it was…+ + showing that same vision & tenacity… (she had been a trades union organiser of garment workers in USA) Laura was a superbly intelligent and hardworking pupil, so much so that +
Dec 20, 2021 • 12 tweets • 3 min read
Lesson for tweeters from important judgment in Riley v Murray: don’t share your damaging take on a tweet without including a screen shot. My THREAD on the judgment 1/ I am not a libel lawyer. This thread is not legal advice. I am just someone who says really critical things and does not like to be sued for libel. (And hasn’t been.) 2/
Dec 16, 2021 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
British court uses British Human Rights Act to interpret British Nationality Act to allow British Home Sec to grant British citizenship to Windrush victims.

Opposed by Home Sec - who didn’t even want the *power* to make them citizens.+ Home Office illegally refused them re-entry to UK, because they had been legally resident here so long Home Office didn’t realise they were legally resident. +
Dec 11, 2021 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
did national media publish this sort of legal falseness before Brexit? We can discuss what s.73 *means* but you only have to read it to see it does not “state”this.

Or is it just a feature of the Spectator becoming a blog? I say “falseness” deliberately. It’s fine for lawyers to argue that provisions don’t mean what they say, or mean more than they say. But that isn’t the claim here. And the piece is by a lawyer, about the law. It’s not a passing comment.
Dec 4, 2021 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Some of you are reading Adam’s thread as if he’s said stripping citizenship is good, or should (politically / morally) be allowed. His thread doesn’t say that. Its a thread about what *law* says and (surprise!) law (made by states) isn’t that great. Disclosure: me and Adam are in the same chambers.

But I haven’t discussed this with him, or read everything he’s written. So I don’t know if I agree with him. But what he says *in this thread* *abt human rights law* is correct.

And IMHO it’s useful for people to have that info