People are already having problem proving their immigration position while travelling back to the country, just 2 weeks after the UK’s transition to an electronic visa (eVisa) system, despite repeated warnings from civilian society and migrant support groups to the Home Office that these issues would occur.
On 31 December 2024, the immigration papers of millions of people surviving in the UK expired after being replaced with a real-time, online-only immigration position by the Home Office.
While the department has been issuing eVisas for respective years – including to European Union (EU) citizens who applied to the EU Settlement strategy (EUSS) after Brexit, those applying for Skilled Work visas, and people from Hong Kong applying for the British National Overseas visa – paper papers have now been completely phased out.
However, according to a report in The Independent, many have already reported issues erstwhile flying back to the UK, with travellers coming from Germany, France, Malawi, Egypt and Cyprus all struggling to prove their immigration position to airport staff.
Others have reported issues in the UK as well, including with GPs not accepting the share codes issued via their UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI) digital account, which people are expected to be able to usage to prove their immigration position erstwhile dealing with a scope of 3rd parties, including employers and letting agencies.
The issues are besides affecting refugees, who are reportedly having problems connecting their passports to their online visa, according to digital rights groups supporting them.
Other refugees are besides incapable to set up or log into their UKVI accounts – which they request to set up a bank account, claim benefits or rent housing – as they have not been forwarded the essential details by the Home Office.
Previous warnings
Despite the problems now being faced, the Home Office has been repeatedly warned by civilian society and migrant support groups about problems with the eVisa system.
While these groups have straight proposed alternatives to the Home Office (such as the usage of QR code or “stable token” systems), the department’s eVisa policy squad insisted as far back as December 2023 that it will not “compromise on the real-time aspect” of the e-Visa checks, as “any check of an individual’s immigration position must be done in real time to reflect the current immigration position held” on its systems.
“As we warned, people are having problems utilizing e-Visas to travel back to the UK,” said the Open Right Group. “We asked the Home Office to make the simple change of allowing people to have a QR code. This could be saved or printed without having to trust on a flawed online-only system.
“Many refugees are inactive waiting for their e-Visas,” it said. “Without them, they cannot work, set up a bank account, rent somewhere to live or claim benefits. The Home Office needs to kind out this mess urgently.”
The Home Office has previously stated in the eVisa terms and conditions that it will take no liability for any problems or disruptions, and direct or indirect losses erstwhile utilizing a UKVI account – including for “any information that is lost or corrupted while data is being transmitted, processed or downloaded from the UKVI account” – which ORG said implies the department “is already aware of the many method issues with the eVisa strategy and is pre-emptively protecting itself against legitimate legal claims”.
ORG and others have said the usage of eVisas should be seen in the context of the UK’s “hostile environment” approach, which is intended to make life in the UK as hard as possible for people choosing to live there.
Home Office response
Computer Weekly contacted the Home Office about all claim made in the story. A spokesperson said: “eVisas bring crucial benefits. They cannot be lost, stolen or tampered with, unlike a physical document, and besides increase the UK immigration system’s safety and efficiency.
“We are continuously listening to concerns people have, and are working closely with airlines and global stakeholders to guarantee the roll-out of eVisas is smooth.”
The Home Office besides referred Computer Weekly to a written statement made by migration and citizenship minister Seema Malhotra in December 2024, in which she recognised “areas of concern” with the eVisa system, noting: “We have decided to let carriers to accept a BRP or EUSS BRC expiring on or after 31 December 2024 as valid evidence of approval to travel until at least 31 March.”
“We recognise a tiny number of customers have experienced issues with their eVisas, which we are working hard to address,” she added, and encouraged those experiencing issues to contact the Home Office.
“Where necessary, the Resolution Centre can enable individuals’ position to be verified through alternate means,” said Malhotra. “Customers can contact the Resolution Centre utilizing an online webchat service or by phone.”
She besides highlighted Assisted Digital, “a free service provided by UKVI to support digitally excluded customers in creating their accounts” that provides support either over the telephone or in face-to-face meetings for people who require assistance with IT-related aspects of the eVisa system.
Repeated warnings
In September 2024, ORG described the online-only, real-time nature of the eVisa strategy – which trawls dozens of disparate government databases to make a fresh immigration position each time individual logs in – as error-prone and “deeply problematic”.
“When users enter their details to log into the Government View and Prove strategy [in their UKVI account], they are not accessing their position directly, but alternatively their credentials are being utilized to search and retrieve dozens of different records held on them across different databases,” it said, adding that research has identified over 90 different platforms and casework systems that immigration data may be pulled from in the UKVI ecosystem to find a person’s status.
“View and Prove uses an algorithmic and probabilistic logic to find which data to extract and which e-records to usage erstwhile it encounters multiple records, i.e. in instances where people have renewed or changed their immigration status, or appealed an incorrect decision,” it said. “It is these real-time and opaque automated checks that make a person’s immigration status, which they can then share with an employer, landlord or global carrier.”
ORG said users face multiple problems as a consequence of these plan choices, including making it “impossible” for an individual to be certain that they will get a correct consequence on any peculiar occasion; increased possible for incorrect decisions as a consequence of people’s records being pulled from “numerous servers”; and the details of 2 different people being conflated or “entangled” in instances where they, for example, share the same name or date of birth.
The Home Office has besides been made aware of these issues by The3million, a grassroots organisation supporting EU citizens in the UK, which has extensively engaged with the department over eVisa issues since October 2021.
According to the investigation highlighted by ORG – published in September 2024 by Monique Hawkins of The3million and Kuba Jablonowski, an algorithmic governance investigator at the University of Bristol – “the operational logic of online-only position is built around immigration application decisions, alternatively than applicants, and it uses an unstable identifier as the key to match and compute online status. Both these plan decisions consequence in systemic error.”
Design issues
The authors besides note that despite “extensive” engagement from civilian society groups, the Home Office is refusing to engage on the “substantive plan issues” identified with its eVisa system; highlighting the eVisa policy teams’ consequence to The3million from December 2023.
“The Home Office responses show the department is determined to keep this strategy where position is being constantly rechecked, so any change in legal position is reflected in the proof of status,” wrote Hawkins and Jablonowski. “However, the side effect is that at least tens of thousands of position holders are incapable to evidence their rights.
“Crucially, no position holder can be certain they will be able to evidence rights at the point of check. Documented position provides a degree of certainty before position check, whereas computational position is only resolved in the minute of position check.”
Speaking with Computer Weekly, Hawkins said that “while these entanglements and problems affect people randomly, across the board”, the issue inactive disproportionately affects certain people more than others.
“As ever, more susceptible people have far little agency [to fix the issue] and the impacts are much greater on them because, for example, they’re much more likely to be working in the gig economy, whereas people at the another end of the scale, if their position doesn’t work, an HR department and a lawyer can get involved, who can then contact the Home Office on their behalf … so the impacts are very disproportionate.”
Jablonowski added that it’s unclear to them why the Home Office made the decision not to usage a “stable unique identifier, like an NHS number equivalent for immigration services”, adding that while most people with immigration statuses are not affected, “we don’t know what the proportion of glitching to non-glitching statuses is. We wouldn’t claim it doesn’t work for most people, and there is an component of that calculation in the Home Office. It’s possible the mistake rate is besides marginal.”
An intensification of the hostile environment
According to another migrant support groups, the shift to eVisas and the foreseeable consequences represent a digital extension of the existing hostile environment.
According to a associate of the Migrants’ Rights Network (MRN) community, the eVisa process has created immense intellectual and bureaucratic burdens for those affected.
“This process is placing blame and fear on to people out of sheer incompetence of the Home Office,” they said. “We all have valid visas, and have already filed for these visas through extended paperwork. Then, erstwhile the Home Office decided to digitalise their system, the work was shifted onto individual people to do the work of the institution.
“Instead of paying staff to transfer and log the data, the Home Office is forcing free labour and causing emotional distress for people without secured immigration status, all the while knowing people will, and must, do it or else hazard legal consequences. This strategy does not benefit the people facing the top impact. It only terrifies.”
Speaking with Computer Weekly, Julia Tinsley-Kent, head of policy and communications at the MRN, said the decision to real-time checking of people’s position is further “intensifying the hostile environment”, especially as quite a few the people her organisation works with do not have readily available net access.
“You talk to people who gotta make decisions between buying food and buying a data package, so for them its actually a real stress … it’s just not realistic for any people,” she said.
“What’s truly interesting is that, despite all this push that the government is putting on digital status, ‘because it’s going to be so easy’, it says – ‘oh, but you should keep your expired physical BRP [Biometric Residence Permit] anyway’, as it’s meant to aid with future applications to stay in the UK.”
Tinsley-Kent added that people already deficiency trust in the Home Office’s ability to effectively and safely handle their data, pointing to flaws in its Atlas database that resulted in more than 76,000 people being listed with incorrect names, photographs or immigration statuses.
Migration minister Malhotra said in her December 2024 statement: “If individual encounters an issue with their eVisa, we can search those records to find their information and confirm their status. BRP holders are besides able to hold their expired BRPs for their own records, and legacy paper holders who make the control to an eVisa will besides inactive have their physical papers as evidence of their immigration status.”
Migrants rights organiser boy Olszewski further told Computer Weekly: “The eVisa strategy will inevitably consequence in thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people being denied access to fundamental rights. It will be peculiarly cruel to people who are digitally excluded – for example, people who cannot afford a smartphone or people like my grandma, who struggles to even send me a text.
“The eVisa system’s only function is to increase state surveillance and reenforce forms of interior border violence. People shouldn’t request to prove their position – digitally or otherwise – to access fundamental rights to housing or healthcare.”
This sentiment was shared by Tinsley-Kent, who noted that regardless of whether a position is digital, it inactive relies on the underlying presumption that the state can and should be able to interrogate where people choose to live or work.
“The reason the state is doing this is to reenforce border force on a day-to-day basis, to put everyone it can into this system, this form of surveillance,” she said.
“It’s part of a much wider movement that’s happening around state surveillance of migrant and racialised people. erstwhile I talk to people who are disproportionately impacted by borders – sex workers, for example – and talk to them about the border becoming more digital, they say they’re afraid about the impact increased surveillance could have on them and how it may hinder their ability to decision across borders for work.”