UK Immigration News

The UK's Chief Inspector of Immigration, John Vine, has been conducting research into abuse of the marriage system by immigrants seeking to obtain residence in the UK.

Mr Vine has warned that sham marriages are 'a massive loophole' which is allowing thousands of people to enter the UK and remain in the country illegally.

Mr Vine said 'Sham marriages between non-Europeans and EU nationals are an increasing threat to immigration control. If not detected, they allow individuals to settle in the UK on the basis of relationships that are not genuine'.

A leading British historian has denounced the UK's student visa regime as 'stupid, incoherent, short-sighted, cack-handed, intrusive and counter-productive'.

Professor Timothy Garton Ash, Professor of European Studies at Oxford University, Isaiah Berlin Professorial Fellow at St Antony's College, Oxford, and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, derides the UK's Coalition government for introducing a 'Kafkaesque, intrusive bureaucracy' where 'everyone is treated as a suspect'.

A new proposal from the UK's Coalition government to limit access to social welfare payments by EU citizens has been branded illegal by the European Commission. This pronouncement escalates a war of words between the EU and the UK over the free movement of European workers.

A BBC investigation into the UK's Tier 4 student visa system has found 'systematic immigration fraud'. An investigation for the Panorama documentary programme found immigration consultants offering forged documents for use in Tier 4 visa applications and offering to help students cheat in government approved exams.

Sir James Dyson, the founder of the Dyson technology company, best known for its vacuum cleaners, has slammed the UK's Coalition government for its immigration policy which, he says, is putting British jobs at risk.

A senior member of the Liberal Democratic Party, the UK's third biggest political party, has urged Liberal Democrat activists to 'keep engaging' with eastern European communities in the UK to help it in the European elections this May.

The EU elections will decide which parties hold the UK's 73 seats in the European Parliament. EU citizens living in the UK will have the right to vote in the elections.