Migrants with no job or money are being allowed to settle in Britain because of failure of background checks

Immigrants are being granted permission to settle in Britain despite having ‘zero income and no employment’, a government inspector warned last night.

The failure to carry out full background checks on the migrants undermines a key Home Office policy that applicants should be able to support themselves and their families without relying on the State.

Foreign nationals who want to remain in the UK permanently are supposed to undergo strict checks by officials into their financial background.

As a minimum, they require enough money to pay for housing, plus a disposable income of more than £100 a week.

But the chief inspector of immigration, John Vine, found potentially tens of thousands were having their applications rubber-stamped without either a face-to-face interview or HMRC investigation.

An estimated one million migrants apply for permission to stay in the UK each year.

But, incredibly, HMRC is willing to do only 3,000 checks a year for the UK Border Agency – just 250 every month. Such checks would establish if a migrant who claimed to be able to support themselves was telling the truth about their income or even having a job.

As a result of the HMRC policy, officials are letting migrants stay without having had access to wages slips, P60 forms and other crucial data.

Mr Vine, who carried out spot checks on a small sample of cases, said officials had granted permission to settle here despite the applicant having ‘zero income and no employment’.

He said the number of HMRC checks was ‘insufficient’ and must be urgently increased.

Of 49 cases he looked at where migrants were asking to stay on the grounds of marriage, not a single person was interviewed. This is despite huge concern over sham marriages.

In other cases, the application was decided while the husband or wife was still overseas. Mr Vine said in one in every ten of such cases the decision reached by immigration officials was ‘unreasonable’, mainly due to  insufficient evidence the migrant could afford to support themselves.

The inspector raised his concerns in a report which focused on how UKBA handles cases involving marriage and civil partnerships.

In it, he also said there are currently more than 16,000 migrants waiting to hear from border officials whether they can stay in Britain in yet another ‘unacceptable’ UKBA backlog.

Some 14,000 applicants, growing at a rate of 700 a month, have already been refused the right to stay but are pleading with officials to reconsider.

An additional 2,100 cases – shipped in a box from a UKBA office in Croydon to Sheffield – are still waiting for an initial decision, some dating back a decade. Mr Vine said: ‘This is completely unacceptable and I expect the Agency to deal with both types of case as a matter of urgency.

‘Delays also mean enforcement action is likely to be more difficult in the event the case is ultimately refused. This is because the individual will have been in the UK for a number of years and may have developed a family or private life.’

He also said the percentage of successful appeals in marriage cases was too high, at 53 per cent from April 2011 to February last year. Sir Andrew Green, of Migration Watch, said: ‘This is yet further evidence of the chaos in the immigration system.’

UKBA said last night: ‘We are working with HMRC to increase the number of searches we can do against their systems. Since this report we have brought in strict new rules on proving income levels to make sure that those bringing in family members are able to support them.’

SOURCE







Endanger America, Keep Your Citizenship?

National Security Threats Should Be Denaturalized

In light of the discussions of a "path to citizenship" for illegal immigrants, it's important to note that in extraordinary cases, the path to citizenship can be run in reverse. Naturalized citizens who acquire their citizenship through fraud, especially those involved in terrorism or espionage, can and should be subject to denaturalization.

The Center for Immigration Studies today released a new report, "Upholding the Value of our Citizenship: National Security Threats Should Be Denaturalized", that discusses the danger of allowing naturalized U.S. citizens who have been charged with serious national security-related offenses to retain their citizenship. Even immigrants who fraudulently conceal material facts in order to be granted citizenship remain citizens and receive all the benefits, including sponsorship of family members for immigration and traveling abroad using a U.S. passport. The report also reveals that the Department of Homeland Security has no method in place for reviewing such cases, which ensures there will not be any future improvement of the vetting process.

The report is  here

Prior to 2000, the Immigration and Naturalization Service administratively denaturalized individuals when facts came to light revealing that an applicant had been ineligible at the time of naturalization. Presently, however, denaturalization can only occur through criminal prosecution or civil suits in the already overburdened federal district courts. The report recommends re-instituting the capability to administratively denaturalize individuals granted citizenship in error or as a result of misrepresentations, concealment of material facts, or other forms of fraud.

“It is the government’s responsibility to protect the American people”, said Mark Krikorian, Executive Director of the Center. “If we are unwilling to provide better screening at the front end, then we certainly should be willing to reverse mistakes and strip citizenship from those involved in terrorism, espionage, and theft of sensitive information and technology.”

The report includes an appendix listing dozens of recent examples of naturalized citizens who have been charged with serious national security offenses.

The above is a press release from from Center for Immigration Studies. 1522 K St. NW, Suite 820,  Washington, DC 20005, (202) 466-8185 fax: (202) 466-8076.  Email: center@cis.org. The Center for Immigration Studies is an independent research institution which examines the impact of immigration on the United States.  The Center for Immigration Studies is not affiliated with any other organization