Praxis sounds the alarm over Home Office's digital visa plans
The Home Office is currently in the process of transitioning from a physical system of proving immigration status to a digital-only system. We fear this process has the potential to cause another scandal on the scale of Windrush back in 2018, where thousands of people predominantly but not exclusively from Caribbean countries found themselves unable to prove their rights to live and work in the UK, with devastating effects.
Currently, people who are granted leave to enter or remain in the UK are issued either a visa printed in their passport or a biometric residence permit (BRP) or card. However, by 1st January 2025, these physical documents will no longer be accepted. Instead, around 4 million holders of physical documents will be expected to use a digital system to view and prove their rights to be in the UK. A further 200,000 people holding older paper documents will be expected to make a complicated application first for a BRP and then move to the digital system.
There is limited information on how this eVisa system will work or details about the transition process to a digital system.
We’re sounding the alarm and here’s why…
You might not know when or how to set up your online account.
There is no information on when or how people will be contacted to set up their online account. People may change their email addresses or phone number, and the Home Office is notoriously bad at keeping in touch with people. We’ve also seen cases of emails sent to people’s legal representatives, asking them to set up a UKVI account with no details of the intended individual.
You might not know when to renew your leave to remain.
Without a physical BRP – with an expiry date written on it – people might not remember when they need to renew their leave to remain, and therefore lose their status altogether if they fail to renew their visa by the deadline.
You might apply to renew your visa at the wrong time.
Most people with a BRP issued in the last couple of years will see an expiry date of 31st December 2024 printed on it. In most cases, this is not the expiry of the person’s leave to remain, but denotes the time when the transition to the digital-only system is meant to be complete. However, many people will be unaware of this and some of them will make a new application to extend their visa before they need to – potentially causing them to spend thousands of pounds unnecessarily. At the moment, getting a refund from the Home Office is tricky and can take months and months.
You might not have the documents needed to set up your account.
Many people may not have the identity documents that may be needed to set up a UKVI account. We’ve already seen this with people who’ve been granted refugee status. They’ve been advised to set up a UKVI account but then discover that they need documents that are not accessible to them, such as passports which may have been left behind in the countries they have fled from.
You might find someone else’s details on your account.
There have been numerous accounts of issues with the existing digital systems where either an individual has been entirely unable to access their digital status, receiving a system error message, or where digital status details have been incorrect or accidentally merged with the details of another individual. For example, when one Praxis community member first accessed her online status, it showed her photograph but the name, date of birth and other details of an entirely different person. If you’re unable to prove your status, you’re unable to prove your right to work, rent, or live in the UK.
You might not know how to log back on.
People with limited digital literacy – such as the elderly and those with severe mental and physical illnesses – will face additional risks once the digital-only system is rolled out.
They might struggle to understand and remember how to navigate the digital system. Therefore, they might not be able to prove their status when they need to, or access the sharecode needed by employers, landlords and service providers when they have to verify right to employment, housing, services and more.
They might lose access to the password, email address and/or phone number their log-in is connected to. What’s more, in some cases people might have relied on external support to set up their digital status, and they might not know what email address and/or phone number it is connected to. Without these details, they might not be able to recover their data or issue a new password in case they lose the original one used to create their account.
They may also become vulnerable to exploitation - in the experience of people with EU Settled Status, it has been reported that in some cases those with limited digital skills were charged by unscrupulous organisations to help them get a share code when they needed to prove status.
Your data could be hacked.
Then there are the data issues of such a huge online system. Recently, we’ve seen the British Library and NHS subject to cyber-attacks which have led to huge loss of data. In fact, this is reflected in the UKVI concerning terms and conditions which state:
excluding UKVI from any liability for loss or damage arising from the use of a UKVI account;
ground for restriction, suspension or termination of an account without notice; and
a power to change the terms & conditions of use of the account solely by changing them on the published online guidance.
We believe that this cliff-edge system has the potential to become a Windrush on steroids – a situation in which potentially millions of people with the right to live and work in the UK might lose their livelihood if they become unable to prove their right to work, rent their homes, have a back account and access state-funded services.
Read our full briefing to find out what needs to change right now.