Sunday 16 February 2014

UK Border Force


If you are contemplating coming to the UK or have some relatives who want to make it to the UK, ensuring your visa application is successful would be prime concern. Apart from the tons of information available across the web, you can watch a reality-cum documentary show of UK Border Agency. Although some telecasts are couple of years old, it provides a sneak-peek into the working of UK Border Agency.

From raiding establishments who employ illegal migrants, what-goes-into in approving a genuine visa application by British High Commissions across the world to denying entry to non-genuine entry seekers to the UK. ( This may involve people who have been in UK and returning after a vacation to the UK.)

It is telecast almost daily through the UK satellite TV network in UK. It delves into the finer points which people often ignore and land themselves a refusal to enter the UK. A refusal to enter the UK due to false documents can result in denial of entry into the UK for 10 years.

I will share some highlights of some of the episodes that have been telecast which may help you follow the legal process in acquiring a UK visa.

Quite a few people planning to go to the UK rely completely on touts and middlemen having no knowledge of UK visa procedures and requirements. If a Entry Clearance officer to whom the application reaches for approval have doubts, the applicant may be called for a personal interview where they are asked questioned about the grounds and reason they seek entry into the United Kingdom.

Some of the basic questions that the visa officer may ask an applicant are:

1) Which field they have graduated from (for employment visa seekers)
2) What they want to see in the UK (for visitor visa seekers), in one of the incidence the applicant had replied 'He wanted to see Birmingham Palace!', which doesn't exist in UK.

One of the visa applicant had submitted a bank statement, which did show salary credits to his account but there were other transactions and balances that were false, which was verifed by the entry clearance officer with bank.

In one of the episodes of the Border Force, where they raided a ethnic takeaway and found scores of illegal workers working there, while most of them had their passports on them, but a few did not have any passport with them.

As they did not have any passport, Border force couldn't deport them. To be able to deport an illegal migrant the border agency needs a passport of their home country. Usually it takes about 6 months to retrieve the identity document of the person, in the meanwhile, they are warned not to work and set free on bail.

Stay tuned for more.

UK Border spent approx. £3.25 to £2.80 between 2010 to 2013, per passenger to process their entry into UK from various places of the world. This is a very good utilisation, considering the number of immigration 102 million in 2010 to 106 million 2013, that UK sees and their success rate in avoiding illegal entrants to the ever shrinking UK's border.

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