Almost 100,000 asylum seekers lost by the shambolic immigration service may never be found, the head of the department revealed yesterday.
18,000 asylum seekers are still in the UK despite being told they should be removed Photo: PA
7:00AM BST 14 Sep 2011
Officials have been unable to trace one in five of the 450,000 forgotten asylum cases meaning they could remain in the UK forever.
The so-called legacy backlog of cases that were never completed was first discovered five years ago, with some dating back to the 1990s.
The Home Office promised to go through every file by the end of this summer.
That target was met but only because officials have concluded they cannot find 98,000 of them.
A further 18,000 are still in the UK despite being told they should be removed, Jonathan Sedgwick, the acting chief executive of the Border Agency, told MPs.
Critics have accused the Home Office of effectively running an amnesty that will see hundreds of thousands of people stay indefinitely in the UK.
The Home Office admitted in 2006 that a backlog of up to 450,000 files had built up. John Reid, who was home secretary at the time, promised to clear it within five years, by this summer.
Following the exercise, more than one in three have been told they can stay, mainly because the time it took for the Home Office to deal with the cases meant they had been in Britain so long they could argue their human rights would be breached if they were ordered to leave.
Only eight per cent, or 37,500, have been removed and another 18,000 are still awaiting removal, some because they committed offences while forgotten and have been subjected to criminal proceedings.
And 98,000 have now been placed in a “controlled archive” which means there is little chance of them being traced.
The rest were either duplicates or errors in the case files.
It means tens of thousands of asylum seekers who may have no right to stay in Britain may never be found.
In a letter to the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, Mr Sedgwick said: “The Agency is actively managing around 18,000 cases which have been caseworked to the furthest possible point but barriers to their removal remain, such as ongoing litigation, impending prosecution, incomplete legal or criminal proceedings, non-compliance or because they are from difficult to remove countries.
“These cases are being actively caseworked and will be concluded when those barriers have been lifted.”
Sir Andrew Green, chairman of Migration Watch UK, said: “This is a shameful piece of history and hugely expensive to the British taxpayer.
“It must never be allowed to recur.”
A UKBA spokesman said: “We are improving the asylum system across the board, clearing the backlog of claims, bringing down costs and resolving cases more quickly.
“We have also made improvements in processing the significant number of legacy cases; where we have had difficulties tracing individuals with outstanding claims we have checked their details against 19 government databases including benefits and driving licensing databases and placed them in a controlled archive." http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/8760895/Almost-100000-lost-asylum-seekers-may-never-be-traced.html
The so-called legacy backlog of cases that were never completed was first discovered five years ago, with some dating back to the 1990s.
The Home Office promised to go through every file by the end of this summer.
That target was met but only because officials have concluded they cannot find 98,000 of them.
A further 18,000 are still in the UK despite being told they should be removed, Jonathan Sedgwick, the acting chief executive of the Border Agency, told MPs.
Critics have accused the Home Office of effectively running an amnesty that will see hundreds of thousands of people stay indefinitely in the UK.
The Home Office admitted in 2006 that a backlog of up to 450,000 files had built up. John Reid, who was home secretary at the time, promised to clear it within five years, by this summer.
Following the exercise, more than one in three have been told they can stay, mainly because the time it took for the Home Office to deal with the cases meant they had been in Britain so long they could argue their human rights would be breached if they were ordered to leave.
Only eight per cent, or 37,500, have been removed and another 18,000 are still awaiting removal, some because they committed offences while forgotten and have been subjected to criminal proceedings.
And 98,000 have now been placed in a “controlled archive” which means there is little chance of them being traced.
The rest were either duplicates or errors in the case files.
It means tens of thousands of asylum seekers who may have no right to stay in Britain may never be found.
In a letter to the Commons Home Affairs Select Committee, Mr Sedgwick said: “The Agency is actively managing around 18,000 cases which have been caseworked to the furthest possible point but barriers to their removal remain, such as ongoing litigation, impending prosecution, incomplete legal or criminal proceedings, non-compliance or because they are from difficult to remove countries.
“These cases are being actively caseworked and will be concluded when those barriers have been lifted.”
Sir Andrew Green, chairman of Migration Watch UK, said: “This is a shameful piece of history and hugely expensive to the British taxpayer.
“It must never be allowed to recur.”
A UKBA spokesman said: “We are improving the asylum system across the board, clearing the backlog of claims, bringing down costs and resolving cases more quickly.
“We have also made improvements in processing the significant number of legacy cases; where we have had difficulties tracing individuals with outstanding claims we have checked their details against 19 government databases including benefits and driving licensing databases and placed them in a controlled archive." http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/8760895/Almost-100000-lost-asylum-seekers-may-never-be-traced.html
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