Countries that won’t take back foreign criminals face UK travel bans
PRITI Patel is to get tough powers to ban foreigners from the UK if their home nations refuse to accept deportations from this country.
Overseas countries – and their citizens – will face new penalties if they fail to take back criminals or other people being removed from Britain.
The Home Secretary will be able to ‘suspend visas entirely’ if a particular country refuses to accept its nationals.
Alternatively, its citizens could face a £190 surcharge to come to Britain or longer waits for their visas.
The changes are designed to encourage overseas governments to cooperate more fully with the UK’s attempts to remove people who do not have the right to live in this country.
It will include foreign offenders who have served their jail term here but whom the Home Office has been unable to deport.
Figures covering up to the end of June show there are a record 11,000 criminals on our streets who are awaiting deportation – up from fewer than 4,000 in 2012. The new measures would also be used to encourage foreign states to take back failed asylum seekers.
If the governments do not cooperate with the Home Office, it could mean their citizens are effectively barred from coming here to work or study, or even to visit as tourists or on business trips.
Figures show there are just under 6,000 failed asylum seekers receiving taxpayer-funded support after exhausting their appeals process – but are deemed ‘destitute’ and cannot immediately be returned, often due to a lack of compliance by their home state.
For example, in some cases foreign governments refuse to supply paperwork such as passports which are required to remove a person from Britain.
It is understood the countries with the worst record on deportations and removals include Sierra Leone, The Gambia, Eritrea, Cambodia and Vietnam.
Miss Patel said: ‘The UK has a proud history of being open to the world but we rightly expect our international partners to work with us to remove those who have no right to be in the UK, such as dangerous foreign national offenders.
‘Through my new plan for immigration, and this landmark legislation, I will continue to take the difficult action needed to fix our broken asylum system and deliver on what the British people want – full control of our borders.’ Immigration minister Tom Pursglove said the measures were ‘a tougher stance on countries that refuse to take back citizens with no right to be in the UK’.
‘Where other nations do not cooperate with deportations and returns, the Home Secretary will have the power to slow down visa processing times, suspend visas entirely or impose a £190 surcharge on visa applications to come to the UK,’ he wrote in an article for the Mail.
‘We play our part by accepting our own nationals who do not have a right to be in other countries – it is only fair that other countries do the same in return.’
The European Union has taken similar steps with The Gambia, temporarily suspending some types of visa processing. Its decision was taken due to the country’s lack of cooperation on readmission of nationals illegally staying in the EU.
Similarly, the United States has restricted visas for noncompliant countries since 2001.
Other changes being introduced in Miss Patel’s nationality and borders Bill, which is going through Parliament, include making it easier to deport foreign criminals by allowing the process to begin earlier in their jail sentences.
It will also introduce ‘robust’ new powers to assess the age of migrants who claim to be children but are suspected of being over 18, such as using dental Xrays or bone scans.
The move comes after a series of farcical cases in which balding men with full beards have ended up in secondary schools being taught alongside teenagers.
More than 3,000 foreign criminals have been living in the community for more than five years after completing their jail terms, Home Office data shows.
‘Slow down visa processing’