Barrister Mark Symes provides advice and representation in all areas of immigration, asylum, and human rights law, including European Union free movement law. He has represented clients in every court from the Tribunal to the Supreme Court, and the European Court of Human Rights.
Mark deals with work ranging from business immigration and entry clearance representations and appeals, to refugee and criminal deportation cases. He is one of the elite top ranked barristers for immigration by the expert legal directories.
Mark is registered with the Bar Council for public access work and regularly represents all kinds of private clients in difficult immigration scenarios.
Immigration Law
Mark takes a proactive and hands-on approach to representing clients, and is available to discuss instructions from the earliest stage. He will advise on the best evidence and tactics that can really give you the best chance to win. You can rest assured that Mark will give your case his very best shot, leaving no stone unturned in helping you to find the strongest evidence. Mark can help you at any stage in your immigration case, ensuring that you fully understand the merits of all available options from the start. Or you can seek his advice just to get reassurance that you are pursuing the right course of action in the most effective way, whether or not you already have a lawyer on board.
Mark sits as a judge of the Upper Tribunal and First-tier Tribunal which gives him great insight into the way a case should be presented. He has appeared in many leading cases involving the most complex issues. He can make the most difficult factual and legal history easy for the Home Office or judges to understand. He is very well known to the Tribunal judges having specialised in immigration appeals for over 25 years. The most senior immigration judge in the UK wrote that Mark’s textbook Immigration Appeals and Remedies Handbook is “a compulsory addition to the library of every immigration judge and practitioner": President of the Upper Tribunal Mr Justice McCloskey).
Mark has long been one of the experts who specialist immigration lawyers go to in order to make sure that they are up to speed with the latest legal arguments and regularly speaks at practitioner conferences. He is recognised as having written the leading textbooks both on immigration appeals and judicial review claims and on international protection law.
Mark's specialities include:
- Advising on the best strategy for achieving the quickest route to regularising your immigration status or achieving an efficient route to settlement
- Explaining the merits of every course of action open to you
- Writing watertight representations to ensure you get the best outcome sooner rather than later
- Persuading judges at appeal hearings of the strength of his clients’ cases
- Writing persuasive pre action letters that avoid the need for subsequent legal action
- Bringing judicial review claims, drafting accurate and persuasive legal arguments and achieving results via efficient and effective advocacy at the permission stage: he is well known for taking over and improving the prospects of JRs
- Showing that administrative mishaps should not have disproportionate results
- Proving that an interview was unfair
- Demonstrating that new evidence or a change of circumstances creates a viable fresh asylum or human rights claim
Private client immigration work
Mark’s experience from practising immigration law for 25 years and sitting as a judge often helps his clients. He is able to deploy the knowledge and insight gained from presenting thousands of cases and the legal research that comes from writing established leading textbooks. Mark has recently helped his clients in:
- Getting cases reconsidered at the administrative review stage due to a failure to properly engage with the evidence originally provided
- Fighting “general refusal” reason cases based on English language test fraud allegations and omissions in application forms
- Fighting allegations regarding tax evasion and asserted discrepancies in earnings reported to HMRC and UKVI
- Getting ILR for clients arguing they have established 10 years’ lawful residence
- Arguing that minor convictions should not prevent applications succeeding
- Challenging refusals and revocations of nationality
- All kinds of EU law and family migration cases (see further below)
- Working alongside colleagues, helping detained clients obtain bail
- Preventing deportation by putting together a watertight case on family links in the UK, advising on the best possible evidence and liaising with independent social workers: Mark is one of the very few barristers to win a deportation case in the Court of Appeal
- Every kind of refugee claim: including winning refugee status for bloggers and many others who have been politically active in the UK and abroad, and achieving justice for asylum seekers with claims based on their sexual identity
Family migration
Mark regularly represents individuals who face separation from loved ones. He regularly presents seminars to very experienced solicitors on the latest legal arguments that are available in these cases.
Mark’s recent work includes:
- Identifying the best route for a spouse or partner to remain or come to the UK and getting the supporting evidence right
Successfully arguing that there are “insurmountable obstacles” to a couple going abroad or that it is unreasonable for a child to relocate - Demonstrating that a spouse seeking entry clearance to return to the UK via did not contrive to frustrate the purpose of the Immigration Rules
- Arguing cases for adult dependents such as parents living in difficult conditions abroad and wanting to join their children in the UK
- Explaining how the complex financial requirements for the Appendix FM route can be met
- Identifying the best options to obtain a visa to visit your loved ones
- Resurrecting refused cases by advising on fruitful sources of fresh evidence, and working out just when JR rather than a further application is the best way forwards
Business and private immigration
Mark's business acumen, developed whilst being a company director at HJT Training, makes him a good choice for commercial immigration advice. He has real expertise in every aspect of business immigration, from Van Der Elst visas for EU-established companies moving staff outside the Tier 2 route to investors, innovators, entrepreneurs and Tier 2 inter-company transfers. He has advised numerous wealthy individuals in complex cases. He has particular expertise with remedies in Points Based System cases including the withdrawal and suspension of sponsor licences, both of employers and educational establishments, an area on which he has written and spoken extensively. Mark has repeatedly been chosen as the Immigration Lawyers' Practitioners' Association speaker of choice at their annual conference for expert business immigration lawyers.
Mark's recent work includes:
- Writing representations seeking the exercise of discretion in all kinds of commercial immigration cases
- Advising on strategy and tactics in sponsor licence cases, including drafting representations against revocation and pre action letters
- Obtaining reconsiderations and reopening the window for fresh evidence in administrative review applications
- Advising investors on technical aspects of their applications and on the fastest settlement route
- Advising businesspeople still on the Entrepreneur route regarding job creation and the timing of an application
- Advising on how best to make use of the sole representative route
- Demonstrating that a businessperson has established private life in the UK or that their property rights should be respected
- Advising investors who have been refused settlement on the basis of suspicions as to whether their original investments were genuine because of the degree of control they held over their funds and the nature of their investments
- Overturning a genuineness refusal for the members of a Tier 1 Entrepreneur Team
European Union free movement law
Mark has particular expertise in all aspects of European Union free movement law from claims under the 2016 Regulations to free-standing applications relying directly on Treaty Rights. He regularly trains and speaks publicly on matters involving European Economic Area (EEA) nationals. Mark has already given numerous talks on the settled status scheme and the impact of Brexit on domestic law in the immigration context.
Mark's recent EU law work includes:
- Obtaining permanent residence and settled status for EEA nationals with challengingly complex histories of work, self-sufficiency and study
- Advising on options in the run-up to Brexit for EU citizens and everyone else affected by Brexit, including dual nationals and family members
- Advising the employers of EU workers on their future options
- Advising on the pros and cons of different kinds of EEA residence rights
- Showing that adult dependants are extended family members who should receive residence cards due to close family ties
- Demonstrating that British citizens have genuinely conducted effective work abroad so they should be allowed to sponsor their family members via EU rather than UK laws (i.e. in Surinder Singh cases)
- Defending clients from allegations of having entered into sham marriages
- Running various EU law claims: the admissibility of post decision evidence, issues of damages, proportionality and unduly onerous administrative expectations and the ambit of effective remedy
