Data which reveals the scale of bad management within the immigration system of Britain has been presented in a legislative report which revealed that collapsed IT infrastructures are to incur as high as £1 bn while officials could not see about 50,000 refuge seekers that were turned down.
The public accounts committee (PAC) of the House of Commons also revealed that over 10,000 refugee applicants in the UK have been on a waiting list for up to 7 years to know if they can remain and that personnel are still yet to clarify 29,000 refuge applications that went as far back as 2007.
The very disapproving report which was made public shortly after the Home Office stood by its approval to stop British assistance for search-and-retrieve activities in the Mediterranean will mount more pressure on David Cameron and his party over the taking care of migration.
The Tories are being blamed by UKIP of not doing enough to step immigration and are threatened by the possibility of losing the Rochester and Strood by-election in Kent next month to the radical Euroscepticc party as the matter continues to be debated.
Natacha Bouchart the mayor of Calais, compounded Cameron’s problems when she revealed to the home affairs committee that the British government had not performed any well by not telling potential migrants that there was no free ticket for them in the UK.
She had revealed that as much as 2,500 migrants in the French port were willing to risk even their lives to just come into Britain.
Reacting to the report, the committee chairperson Margaret Hodge stated that MPs have discovered that the Home Office is facing serious challenges trying to handle major setbacks in the whole immigration process.
She reiterated the need for the Home Office to provide talented, motivated personnel and analyse its information so that it can solve the outstanding and move persons through the process. There is too much pressure and the Home Office must take immediate measures to solve the mess.
In March 2013, the Home Office discontinued the Border Agency of the UK (UKBA) because its work in handling outstanding issues was not satisfactory. Its duties were inherited by three agencies – UK Border Force, Visa and Immigration and Immigration Enforcement – which are expected to gulp £1.b bn annually.
The breakdown of two serious IT contracts has frustrated the activity of the Home Office to trace persons passing within the immigration process. Expenses may increase to £1bn.
MPs also reviewed the government’s decision in 2012 to establish a unit for Older Fresh Cases to handle over 350,000 asylum and relocation allegations dating far back before April 2007. The submission stated that the number of outstanding cases was now over 28,000 with another over 10,000 which had not had any initial approval.
The committee discovered that personnel were still sorting out fresh asylum requests which had also created a pile of reports.
The amount of claims that needed a first decision increased by over 60% to over 16,203 in Q1 of 2014 when put side by side with the same time the previous year.
This was as a consequence of a failed effort by the Borders Agency of the UK to reduce staff which led to 120 experienced staff leaving, as asylum employees were downgraded and they left in droves.
The submission also answered the “refusal pool for migration” where individuals are listed for not having any approval to live in Britain, but personnel were not aware if they had already gone or were still illegally staying.
However, a private company engaged by the Home Office called Capita discovered that persons whose approval had yet been found. Their whereabouts were simply unknown.
Personnel of Home Office stated that the report was wrong to suggest that there was as many as 11,000 unresolved cases because a lot of them only required further representation.
The minister of immigration and security James Brokenshire said that the system could not carry out the assignment in its previous structure, which was why they had to break it up into three separate entities. However, rectifying years of decay was not going to be easy, but it was going to take some time.
But for the shadow minister of home affairs Yvette Cooper previous administrations could not be held accountable for the errors now revealed.
Lisa Doyle who is the head of advocacy of the Refugee Council stated that it was of great concern that a lot of persons were still waiting for a judgement on their asylum claim. She wondered how they coped living with no detail, but still waiting for what could be a sentence to life or death.