2025 – More immigration restrictions and dysfunctional AI

As you will know from our blogs and vlogs, 2025 has seen a lot more restrictions in the immigration field, and there are more restrictions to come. We will not rehearse the painful details but we note that we are already aware of potential migrants who have changed their minds about coming to work in the UK because of the Home Secretary’s plans about “earned settlement”. 

Another theme has emerged in the last few months or so, which first of all was annoying but now emerges as positively dangerous – AI. A new phenomenon has emerged such that when you look up an immigration topic on your computer you get flashing up somewhere near the top of your screen “AI Overview”. This purports to be a summary of the subject and it also provides links to other sources of information. 

The problem is that sometimes the overview is wrong – and occasionally you come across a disclaimer saying that this information may be wrong and you should check it with a lawyer. 

This sort of thing is evidently not limited to immigration subjects. We were recently researching on Britannica.com and we read AI-generated answers from Britannica articles. AI makes mistakes, so verify using Britannica articles.

Being simple people we wondered why not read the Britannica articles in the first place? Why waste time with something that may be wrong?

In the immigration field consequences in this area can be disastrous. We recently had a client who had applied for a partner visa and they carried out their research using AI, which turned out to be a very bad idea. AI told them that the financial earnings requirement was £18,600 gross pa, whereas in fact this information was out of date and the actual requirement was £29,000. Unsurprisingly their application was refused. They contacted AI and AI said “whoops, sorry” or words to similar effect. We suppose that AI can always say that they are protected by the disclaimer they occasionally publish but this is hardly the point.

We strongly advise all our readers not to use AI for immigration advice. For one thing immigration law is too complicated for AI to be able to deal with adequately and for another thing it moves on constantly and rapidly and AI does not catch up. 

We have also noted – on a connected but slightly different subject – that some lawyers in the courts are getting themselves into a right pickle (to use a legal expression) with the use or more accurately misuse of AI. 

It seems that there is some sort of overarching idea or feeling that the more technology you have the better; experience so far indicates that this is far from the case. In any event these problems do not look as though they are going to go away anytime soon. 

And on this uncertain note I would like to wish all our readers a nice Christmas, New Year, and Festive Season generally. 

Oliver Westmoreland

Senior Immigration Lawyer