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Immigrant amnesty will only get worse

Thursday, 2nd June 2011

A change in guidance for border officials created an "amnesty" for asylum seekers, MPs have said.

The UK Border Agency's target of clearing the historic backlog of 450,000 cases by this summer "seems to have been achieved largely through increasing resort to grants of permission to stay", a report found.

Four out of 10 of the cases that have been concluded led to the asylum seeker being allowed to stay in the UK, figures showed.

To clear the backlog, guidance was revised to allow officials to consider granting leave to remain to applicants who had been in the UK for between six and eight years, as opposed to the 10-12 years that applied at the start of the backlog-clearing process, the MPs said.

Some 403,500 cases were concluded, with just 38,000 (9%) having their claims rejected and being removed from the UK.

But 161,000 (40%) were granted leave to remain, "such a large proportion that it amounts in effect to an amnesty", the committee said.
Some 74,500 other cases have been sent to the controlled archive "signifying that the applicant cannot be found and the agency has no idea whether or not the applicant remains in the UK, legally or otherwise".

In one in six cases, the UKBA "has been completely unable to trace what has happened to the applicant", the MPs said.

Responding to the findings, UKIP Leader Nigel Farage said: "David Cameron has previously slapped down fellow Conservatives for daring to suggest an amnesty for illegal immigrants yet it appears this is exactly what is happening.

"In order to maintain an effective immigration system, those that have overstayed their visas and therefore have no right to legally be in the UK need to be removed, not covertly merged into society. The system is not working and with cuts to the UK Border Agency's budget, it can only get worse."

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