The UK media is having an absolute field day. Linda Costelloe-Baker, who monitors visa refusals, has told the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee that around 15% of short-term visas are wrongly approved. She told the committee, officials were “under pressure” to issue visas rather than refuse them to help productivity targets. Basically approval is a “much faster” process than rejection. Approxiametely 2.4 million visa applications are examined each year, of which nearly 2 million are approved giving foreign nationals the right to come and stay for 6 months. If 15% of these 2 million aren’t processed properly, then there are in theory 300,000 candidates to become illegal immigrants entering this country each year. This latest news makes a mockery of the governments claims to have a grip on the immigration system. Whatever kudos Gordon Brown may have garnered from his handling of the financial crisis has been seriously diminished (at least domestically) by this latest news.
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