How It Affects Your Immigration Status

Page 3 covered what can happen at a protest. This page covers what those events can do to your right to stay. Two different tests apply, depending on what you are asking the Home Office for.

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If you have leave, or you're applying for it#

The Home Office can refuse a new application, and cancel permission you already hold, on criminal grounds. Some refusals are mandatory: a custodial or suspended sentence of 12 months or more, an offence that caused serious harm, or being assessed as a persistent offender. Others are discretionary, including a shorter sentence or a non-custodial disposal. These rules reach permission already granted, not only new applications.[10]

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If you're applying for settlement or citizenship#

You have to show you are of good character, and there is no legal definition. The Home Office decides on the balance of probabilities, and what it may consider is open-ended in both directions: conduct, personal circumstances, associations including family, finances, and whether you have been straight with it. Guidance also requires positive factors to be weighed, including a long period without offending and voluntary work.[11]

In 2016 character grounds accounted for 44 per cent of citizenship refusals, the largest single category, though the overall refusal rate ran between 3 and 10 per cent.

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Who you know#

Associations count, and not only family. Applicants have been refused over who else was in a group they joined, or over a friend’s partner, learning those people were of interest only when the refusal arrived. If you are told someone you know is under investigation, get advice.

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Spent convictions and cautions#

Old convictions become spent for most purposes, but immigration and nationality decisions are carved out of that protection: a conviction spent everywhere else still has to be declared and can still be taken into account. Simple cautions are spent as soon as they are given, but remain on the Police National Computer.[12]

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Persistent offending#

You can be treated as a persistent offender without ever being convicted. The Home Office's own guidance gives the example of someone "repeatedly arrested for the same offence but never convicted", and it is a mandatory ground for refusal and for cancelling permission you already hold. Guidance also states there is no fixed number of offences, and that rehabilitation and a period of good behaviour may displace the classification. If you go to protests often, the thing to weigh is the pattern rather than any single arrest.

A pending charge will normally stop a citizenship application until the case concludes, so if you are waiting on a court date, get advice before applying for anything.

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Non-conducive grounds#

Alongside the rules about convictions sits a separate mandatory ground: that your presence in the UK is not conducive to the public good. The guidance states that no criminal conviction is needed. The test is your character, conduct or associations, and it covers conduct abroad as well as here.[19]

• The standard is the balance of probabilities. Vague allegations are not enough, but police intelligence and "reliable open-source information" can be. Open source means publicly visible, which includes your accounts.
• Publishing counts. The guidance lists writing, producing, publishing and distributing material, and running a website.
• It reaches forwards, and it is not limited to politics: someone can be refused where they intend to engage in activities likely to give rise to public disorder, and the guidance says activities need not be politically motivated.

Where there is a conviction, caseworkers are directed to the conviction rules instead. This is the route for conduct falling short of one.

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Problems at work#

You can lose your status without the police being involved at all. If your visa is tied to your job, losing the job puts your right to stay at risk however you lose it, and the protection against dismissal for industrial action is not absolute: where a strike does not meet every legal requirement, dismissal can be lawful.[17]

Research on migrant workers has documented employers referring to immigration status when workers raise concerns or join a union. Joining a union is lawful and protected, but if your visa depends on your employer, get advice before you act.

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The 12-month line#

A sentence of 12 months or more makes you a "foreign criminal" in law, and the Home Secretary must then make a deportation order.[13] Since 22 March 2026 a suspended sentence of 12 months or more does the same, for anyone sentenced on or after that date.[18]

There are exceptions, turning on long lawful residence and integration, or on the effect on a British or settled partner or child, but the threshold is high: the courts have said the effect must be "unduly harsh", meaning severe or bleak rather than difficult.

A community order does not trigger the duty, but the Probation Service refers both community orders and suspended sentences to the Home Office team handling foreign national offenders. A community order is a common outcome for protest offences. A deportation order lasts at least ten years, and at the end of a prison sentence you can be held in immigration detention with no automatic bail hearing and no time limit.

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Making your own case#

Home Office guidance is guidance. None of the grounds above operates entirely automatically, arguments can be put to rebut a presumption of refusal, and caseworkers must weigh the individual case. Most applications succeed. The point is not that refusal is likely, but that the grounds are wider than most people expect and that what you do after police contact makes a difference.

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What to do#

• Get immigration advice after any police contact, even if you were not charged and nothing came of it.
• Keep your own record: dates, what happened, officers' shoulder numbers, and any paperwork you were given.
• Declare everything, including anything you think is too old or too minor. Failing to declare is itself a ground for refusal, and under-declaring risks refusal for deception, which carries a ten-year bar.