UK Border Agency staff failed to check thousands of tip-offs about overseas students including whether they had actually enrolled on courses, a report said today.
We are the first Government to tackle the historically high levels of abuse in the student visa system.
We have toughened the rules to ensure that genuine students are not taken advantage of by organisations looking to sell immigration not education.
I am glad this report recognises the operational improvements that have been made at the Agency, and particularly that both Beijing and New Delhi consistently met performance targets.
Chief Inspector report is damning, says Chris Bryant
The report reveals the scandalous situation where legitimate students are being turned away from attending our universities, while students reported to UKBA by our institutions for potentially going missing are not being followed up.
The massive 153,000 backlog of people who have potentially gone rogue emphasises that, with Theresa May running the Home Office, we are getting the worst of both worlds.
UKBA failed to act on student checks, says Chief Inspector
UK Border Agency staff failed to check thousands of tip-offs about overseas students including whether they had actually enrolled on courses, a report said today.
The agency had no targets in place for responding to notifications made using the Sponsor Management System.
As a result, notifications of changes to circumstances of students, details of students failing to enrol or attend classes, or curtailment of sponsorship were not being acted upon.
Over 150,000 notifications had accumulated and were awaiting action, meaning that potentially thousands of students had retained leave to remain when they should not have done so. This was a significant failure.
– The Chief Inspector report
However, Mr Vine said his findings were "generally positive" and that he was "pleased" that the agency had reviewed the notifications.
I was pleased to note that in May 2012 the agency had reviewed outstanding sponsor notifications and launched an operation to identify and remove people, including students, who had overstayed beyond the term of their visa.
This should be an ongoing priority rather than the subject of a one-off operation by the agency.
– Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration John Vine
Report: UKBA let thousands of overseas students overstay
The backlog of 153,000 notifications could potentially have meant that thousands were wrongly allowed to remain in the country, the Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration said.
The tip-offs were all reviewed by May this year, but Mr Vine said it must be an "ongoing priority" to make sure checks are carried out.
His team examined work at three UKBA offices in Sheffield, Beijing and Delhi.
UKBA 'ignored' 153,000 tip-offs about oversea students
UK Border Agency staff failed to check thousands of tip-offs about overseas students including whether they had actually enrolled on courses, a report said today.
UKBA failed to check tip-offs about overseas students, according to the report Credit: PA Archive
Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration John Vine found that the UKBA had allowed a backlog of 153,000 notifications from sponsors of non-EU students to build up, including whether students had enrolled on courses or were turning up for classes.
