Tens of thousands more ‘lost’ migrant visa files discovered in a room in Sheffield
Up to 300,000 migrants may still be in the country despite not holding a visa, although the precise number is not known for sure because the newly discovered files are more than six years old.
The discovery also raises questions about the Ankara Agreement, which allows Turkish citizens to set themselves up in business in the UK. Applications under the popular scheme were handled in Sheffield until earlier this year.
The find was exposed by John Vine, the chief inspector of borders and immigration, who is responsible for overseeing the Home Office’s immigration work.
“Any failure to take action against foreign nationals who overstay their permission to be in the UK has the potential to undermine public confidence in immigration control,” he said.
There were already 150,000 migrants on the Home Office’s books who had failed to leave the UK after being refused permission to remain. Mr Vine said the Sheffield discovery added 223,000 files to that number, although around 78,000 were duplicate records or individuals who had already left the country.
Just 1% of visa overstayers contacted by a Home Office contracters left the country after being told to do so, Mr Vine said.
ANKARA AGREEMENT DISCOVERY?
The discovery of 223,600 files dating to before December 2008 was made in Sheffield, a major centre for handling UK immigration applications including the European Communities Association Agreement with Turkey, also known as the Ankara Agreement.
The UK began to formally handling Ankara Agreement applications in Sheffield after losing a landmark court case in 2007.
Mr Vine’s report does not indicate how many of the records unearthed at Sheffield were Ankara applications.
LABOUR BLAMED
James Brokenshire, the immigration minister, said the previous Labour government was responsible for the ballooning backlog:
“We inherited an immigration system in complete disarray, which turned a blind eye to hundreds of thousands of people with no right to be here, and made no attempt to remove them or even to properly identify the scale of the problem.
“Under the UKBA [UK Border Agency] there was no systematic plan to deal with illegal migrants other than failed asylum seekers and foreign criminals.
“We scrapped the failing UKBA and brought its work back under the control of ministers partly in order to sort out that mess.”
POLITICAL HOT POTATO
The discovery comes at a time of heightened political tensions over immigration, with the main parties attempting to determine their policies in response to the rise of the UK Independence Party.
Many politicians have argued high levels of immigration are responsible for a higher welfare bill and overcrowding.
But the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, cut a solitary figure in the country’s political scene by saying Britons with concerns about the growing population should ask themselves if they would be bothered if it was fuelled by a surge in white Anglo Saxon protestant babies.