SOLICITORS ARE COMPETING WITH QUACKS BECAUSE OF RESTRICTIONS ON LEGAL AID FOR ASYLUM SEEKERS, WRITES ROBERT VERKAIKRestrictions on legal representation of asylum seekers in this country provide solicitors with an unwelcome insight into the plight of their clients.The absence of legal aid at the immigration appeal tribunal, the huge backlog of two- and three-year-old cases awaiting determination and the administrative incompetence which now plagues the system, means solicitors have become as frustrated as their political refugee clients.

Empathy with a client's case is one thing, say immigration lawyers, but having to represent an asylum seeker with one arm tied behind the back is an affront to natural justice.The situation is made worse by the fact that a number of immigration consultants have sprung up to cash in on shortfalls in the legal system, some of whom are cowboys.The frustration expressed by Jane Coker, a founding member of the Immigration Law Practitioners Association (ILPA), is typical of how many immigration solicitors feel.

She says there is a high level of incompetence in the system which is costing asylum seekers' money.

Last week, Ms Coker represented an asylum seeker in a case where the Home Office's presenting officer was inadequately prepared for the hearing.

The adjudicator ruled that the substantive appeal could not go ahead.

Ms Coker says: 'My view is that it is a problem for the presenting officer.

The case had been listed for six months.' She says this happens all too regularly.

'It's because the presenting officers do not get the files from the Home Office until about a week or ten days before the hearing.'Administrative failures like this, argues Ms Coker, will mean a client will have to pay twice -- for the adjourned hearing and the new one.

While a political refugee might have been able to scrape together £300, finding another £300 is usually impossible.

Adding to the problem, more adjudicators are making orders which will incur costs not covered by the green form advice and assistance scheme, she says.

Once again, the extra expense will put pressure on the appellant to look for cheaper representation.

It is at this stage that they become vulnerable to the attentions of those immigration consultants who are unscrupulous.Bernard Andonian, a partner with immigration practice Gulbenkian Harris Andonian, sees the problems from both sides of the fence.

As an immigration lawyer he represents fee-paying asylum seekers as well as sitting on appeal tribunals as one of the Lord Chancellor-appointed special adjudicators.

As an adjudicator he has not only witnessed low standards of service provided by some consultants but also fraudulent conduct.On one occasion, Mr Andonian was forced to call in the fraud squad when it came to light that an immigration consultant had charged an appellant £25,000 for a false passport.

On another occasion, a consultant had forged a Home Office order which purported to grant an asylum seeker permanent residence.There have even been occasions, says Mr Andonian, where cowboy consultants have sent over interpreters with no understanding of immigration law to present the case.

And when these consultants attend, says Mr Andonian, they often simply cite as many immigration rules as possible in the vain hope that their clients might fall under one heading.'They are ripping off foreign clients,' he says.

'They take a large amount of money on account, £500 to £5,000, in order to deal with the case.

Some of them are completely bogus.

Bogus because they know next to nothing about asylum and immigration.' Mr Andonian says it is only when things go wrong that they are found out.

'But by that time the damage has already been done,' he says.

'Asylum seekers don't think about suing these people because they are more concerned about their immigration status.'Ms Coker says: 'There needs to be some kind of control over them.

If they cock-up then there should be some kind of disciplinary or insurance scheme in the same way that solicitors have.'Mr Andonian says: 'Anybody can set up on the high street and say: "I am an immigration consultant" as long as they don't pass themselves off as a solicitor.' However, he accepts that there are a number of immigration consultants who do provide a professional service.

These can be contacted through the Immigration Advisory Service or the Refugee Legal Centre.Immigration lawyers agree that restrictions on legal aid for the representation of asylum seekers have created a vacuum in which unscrupulous immigration consultants have been allowed to practise.

Mr Andonian is clear on this point.

'Legal aid should be made available within the appellate system,' he says.The Law Society is looking at both the symptom -- immigration consultants who are bogus -- and the cause -- restricted legal aid.

Ruth Bundey, a partner at Harrison Bundey & Co in Leeds and chairwoman of the Law Society's immigration law sub-committee, says: 'We are working with all sorts of groups to try to rectify the situation.' Discussions between Judge David Pearl, president of the Immigration Appeals Tribunal, the Law Society and ILPA have led to the drafting of new guidelines on the representation of asylum seekers (see Immigration: new guidelines for practitioners, [1997] Gazette, 13 August, 42).

At the end of August, the immigration law sub-committee met Home Office Minister Mike O'Brien and its members pressed him to extend representation.

Ms Bundey says: 'Those involved in the appellate scheme for immigration can see the sense of not having this artificial barrier that means you can do so much for a person an d then you have to stop at the door of the hearing.'Martin Penrose is an immigration lawyer with London-based law firm Winstanley-Burgess.

It is his experience that a large number of asylum seekers, working in poorly paid jobs, still earn sufficient money to fail to qualify for full advice and assistance under the green form scheme.

In these circumstances, like many immigration lawyers, a large part of Mr Penrose's work is carried out on a pro bono basis.Explains Mr Penrose: 'We try to cover that type of scenario but it is very difficult.

Some cases just demand representation and you are obliged to take them on.'When firms such as Winstanley-Burgess have done all they can under the green form scheme, they endeavour to find a suitable representative.

'We instruct barristers for nearly all our hearings,' says Mr Penrose.

'Although you can sometimes find barristers from the Free Representation Unit or others who are prepared to work pro-bono, you can't always guarantee it.'Representation can be made considerably more difficult if a client is being detained.

Mr Penrose says it is difficult to help detainees who are being held in prisons, due to limited space at government immigration centres.

Mr Penrose says: 'The prison regime is really not appropriate for an asylum seeker.' Mr Penrose is particularly critical of the restricted visiting hours at prisons compared with the more flexible approach taken at designated detention centres.Even after detention, the length of the wait for the final result of an appeal can be two to three years.

'It creates real hardship for those who have got strong cases,' says Mr Penrose.

'They live in a sense of great anxiety, not knowing whether they are going to be sent back and quite often they have to report to the police.'The Home Office has now introduced a 'short procedure' for asylum seekers from the so-called 'white list' countries, such as India and Bulgaria, where the initial decision on political asylum is made within two weeks.

But the average waiting time for asylum seekers of non-white list countries still remains two to three years.

The backlog of cases has reached such a critical point that lawyers are reporting rumours of an amnesty being granted to all those cases still outstanding.

Ms Bundey says that 'clearly that is not going to happen'.Meanwhile, firms like Winstanley-Burgess continue to turn down around eight new requests for representation from asylum seekers each day.HOMOSEXUALS HAVE LONG BEEN ARGUING FOR A LEVEL PLAYING FIELD IN IMMIGRATION.

TIM WEEKES TALKS TO THE SOLICITORS INVOLVEDBefore the end of the year, Home Office ministers are fully expected to announce a change in UK immigration law that will allow gay and lesbian non-European Union citizens to settle permanently with a British partner in the same way as a husband or wife from abroad can do currently.If they do so, the politicians will inevitably take credit for bringing about a progressive reform that ends a small part of the official discrimination against homosexuals.

But such a move would merely be the culmination of a long-running campaign in which a series of reforms has been won -- not by politicians, but by a small group of specialist immigration solicitors using courts and tribunals to achieve equality of treatment for their homosexual clients.Wesley Gryk, who runs his own central London immigration practice, has been among those at the centre of the legal battle.

He says it started five years ago when a number of non-EU citizens, some of whom he represented, made applications to join their sa me-sex partners citing their homosexual relationships.

These were ground-breaking moves.

Non-EU citizens in genuine marriages with Britons have the right to live in the UK provided they can support themselves economically.

There was no such provision in the law for homosexuals, and so previously gays and lesbians had to find other grounds for permission to stay in the UK.Mr Gryk, originally from the US, faced the same problem himself 17 years ago.

He first came to the UK because of his job with the United Nations.

While here, he started a relationship with a British man.

When the UN wanted to post him abroad, he left his job and applied for residence in the UK.

Luckily, he was able to get a work permit and, eventually, UK citizenship.

But he was not able to use his relationship with a British citizen to justify his application.

So he well understood the courage of his clients' decisions to base their application on their gay relationships.As expected, the Home Office initially turned down all of the original applicants.

Then the legal battles began in earnest.

Mr Gryk says: 'For the first two or three years it was a difficult job because the government held out no real hope of changing its position.'But Mr Gryk and other solicitors began to attack the government's position through the immigration appeals tribunal.

They argued that it was riddled with inconsistencies.

For instance, the Home Office had a concession that allowed common law heterosexual partners, who did not want to or could not marry, to immigrate in the same way as spouses.

The applicants' solicitors argued that it was inconsistent for the Home Office to accept heterosexual relationships outside marriage as genuine but not homosexual ones.Faced with a series of losses at the tribunal, the government changed its policy in 1994.

Home Office ministers announced they would consider granting applications from same-sex partners where there were 'compelling compassionate' reasons to do so.

This set an important precedent, as gay couples began to realise they would not be refused residence just because they were not heterosexuals.In their battles with the tribunal and the Home Office, they and their legal representatives were able to draw on a bank of information gathered by the homosexual campaign group Stonewall.

Stonewall now publishes a regular newsletter to inform lawyers of all relevant decisions and changes of legal interpretation.

The information gathered by Stonewall helped solicitors such as Mr Gryk attack the interpretation of the phrase 'compelling compassionate'.Initially, this was taken to apply to cases in which the UK partner was suffering from an AIDS-related illness.

But this left it open to the lawyers to argue that any same-sex partner in a long-standing relationship had compassionate grounds to stay.

So the policy shifted again in April 1995.Now, ministers said, an application outside the rules would not be granted 'unless the relationship is long-standing or there are other compelling compassionate features'.The government had now formally conceded that homosexuals, just by virtue of being in a long-standing relationship with a British citizen, could be considered for permanent residence.

Stonewall says that by using these various concessions, and by objecting to the Home Office's reasons where it refused applications, 20 same-sex partners have won permanent leave to stay in the UK purely on the basis of their homosexual relationships.This was in spite of Conservative ministers' public assertions that it would be 'illogical' to allow homo sexuals the legal right to do so when English law gives no status to homosexual relationships.

But as Mr Gryk says, homosexual couples have only won because 'they were prepared to fight and fight'.

In doing so, they have had the support of solicitors who have become familiar with every twist and turn of immigration law and procedure.THE ABOLITION OF THE PRIMARY PURPOSE RULE HAS NOT EASED THE TASK OF IMMIGRATION SOLICITORS, FIONA BAWDON DISCOVERSHome Secretary Jack Straw's decision to scrap the primary purpose rule on 5 June was widely welcomed by immigration lawyers.

This rule -- where before being allowed in to the UK, a spouse from abroad had to show that entry to the country was not the main reason for the marriage -- was generally seen as unfair by immigrant groups and their advisors.The difficulties of proving a negative would sometimes force couples into farcical situations, misleading the immigration authorities in order to have their wholly legitimate marriage recognised as valid.

One lawyer cites examples of potential immigrants being afraid to show any enthusiasm for living in the UK at all, for fear that it would be misconstrued; and of couples -- whose marriages were quite properly arranged -- pretending they had fallen in love at first sight.Although there is almost universal enthusiasm for scrapping the primary purpose rule, some lawyers say it has rapidly become clear that there are now not fewer hoops for immigrants to jump through, but different kinds of hoops.'Life abhors a vacuum,' says Ruth Bundey, partner at Harrison Bundey in Leeds and chairwoman of the Law Society's immigration law sub-committee.

'It certainly does not get any easier.' The loss of primary purpose has coincided with more stringent checking in other areas, she says, such as maintenance and accommodation.

Couples have always had to show there were adequate funds to support the spouse from abroad and that proper accommodation was available.

However, Ms Bundey says it is getting harder and harder to furnish proof that will satisfy the immigration authorities.

'It is certainly no longer enough simply to provide wage slips and an employer's letter to show that the spouse living here is employed,' she says.

'Instead, corroboration is generally needed from the Inland Revenue.

You would think that if somebody has got a job there would be no problem getting this information, but it is not always quite so simple.

I had one case where the Revenue was unable to confirm a job, not because it did not exist but because they had filed something under a number with one digit wrong,' says Ms Bundey.Without third-party corroboration, it can be difficult to convince the authorities, she says.

If the existence of a job is being challenged, the applicants may be asked about the number of people they work with, the names of their workmates and so on.Ms Bundey had one case where a woman, because of her cultural background, was not allowed to talk to her colleagues.

'She just sat at her machine and kept her eyes down,' says Ms Bundey.Because she could not supply any anecdotes about her fellow workers, she was disbelieved about the job and her appeal failed.

It only became clear in April when her P60 arrived that she genuinely had been working there all along, she says.Richard McKee, tribunal counsellor and barrister at the government-funded Immigration Advisory Service, says this rigorous approach is also being applied to questions of accommodation.

In some cases, where the spouse from abroad will be living in his or her partner's family home, some clear ance officers are insisting on a report from the local authority's environmental health officer that the house is not overcrowded.

If the local authority is not prepared to co-operate, it means the family must go to the expense of using an independent surveyor, he says.

Mr McKee adds that whatever rule changes there may have been, the attitude of many in the immigration service remains unchanged.

'The culture is very much to keep a certain number of people out,' he says.

'You cannot expect that to change overnight.' Primary purpose may be dead, but not necessarily buried.

It appears to be making a comeback in another guise, he warns.'Applications which would previously have been refused under primary purpose are now being refused because entry clearance officers are not satisfied that the couple intend to live together,' says Mr McKee.

This is particularly inappropriate when people are from cultures where there is huge pressure on couples to stay together and where marital breakdown is seen as wholly unacceptable, he adds.Jawaid Luqmani, a partner at Jane Coker & Partners in London, suspects the government acted quite cynically in abolishing primary purpose: taking credit for a humanitarian move while knowing that the change would not actually make much difference.

'In recent years, primary purpose was not really affecting that many people,' he says.

'In years gone by, it was extremely relevant but it has been a bit on the back burner for a while.'Like Ms Bundey and Mr McKee, Mr Luqmani says maintenance and accommodation are now the key issues.

Even those who were previously caught under primary purpose have little cause for celebration, he says.Although they have been encouraged to reapply, there will be no refunding of their initial application fee, and despite having been through the process once already, they will have to join the back of the queue which, in some areas, means waiting 14 to 18 months before their application will be looked at again.

Mr Luqmani describes the government's approach as 'miserly'.But if the changes in the wake of the abolition of primary purpose are not giving much solace to potential immigrants, they are not much fun for practitioners either, according to Ms Bundey.

'It is a case of trying to anticipate what else could possibly be required as proof of something that we have not thought of; what tenth layer of what we are saying can we find,' she says.

Assembling all the bits of paper is a 'dispiriting, mechanistic' process, she says.

'Sometimes I feel a bit like a conveyancer.'