UK Immigration News

The United Kingdom's Immigration Minister, Damian Green MP, has announced a range of measures to cut immigration to the UK. He said that, during the last Labour government, which ruled from 1997 to 2010, immigration controls had been too loose. 3.5m immigrants settled in the UK, many of them from the ten eastern European countries which joined the European Union in 2004.

London Metropolitan University has been stripped of its Highly Trusted Sponsor (HTS) status by the United Kingdom Border Agency (UKBA) according to a report which appeared in The Sunday Times on Sunday 26th August 2012. The newspaper said that its report was based on information leaked by the UKBA. If the paper is correct, then students who already have places at the university will lose the right to study in the UK. London Metropolitan would be the first publicly funded education institute to lose HTS status.

The United Kingdom's Home Secretary, Theresa May, has announced a crackdown on sham marriages. Writing in The Sun newspaper for 28th August 2012, Mrs May says she will legislate to allow the UKBA to delay a wedding involving a non-EU national when its investigators suspect that it may be bogus. The wedding will be delayed to allow time for an investigation and will only be allowed if the UKBA is satisfied that the relationship is genuine.

The United Kingdom's immigration authority, the UK Border Agency, has announced that it intends to launch a database of information about immigrants to the UK in September. The UKBA has been working on the National Allegation Database for some time. It is intended to store information about foreign nationals residing in the UK and to prevent people from staying in the country illegally. The UKBA hopes that the database will enable it to clear the backlog of 276,000 immigration cases currently on its books.

We remind you that penalties for illegal working remain severe. A UK Border Agency spokesman told The Daily Telegraph on 22nd August 2012 that UK immigration authorities have removed 2,000 illegal workers from the UK since May. The spokesman told the paper that UK Border Agency staff raided a Tesco warehouse at Farm Lane, Croydon, south London at 3a.m. on Saturday 21st July 2012. UKBA staff arrested 22 people on suspicion of breaching the terms of their UK visas.

Projections by The United Kingdom's Office of Budget Responsibility (The OBR) have shown that higher immigration levels would reduce pressure on public spending levels and encourage growth in the British economy.