Speeding up removals
The government today reiterated its determination to continue working through the archive of old asylum cases.
More than 500,000 cases were discovered in 2006. A lot of these legacy cases dated back many years making them the most challenging to resolve.
The number of archived cases has grown as these old cases have at last been tackled. These challenging cases will be looked at afresh every six months, checked against up to 19 internal and external databases.
As soon as a match is found the UK Border Agency will take action.
Working to fix mistakes of the past
Damian Green Immigration Minister said: ‘The immigration system we inherited was chaotic and this government is working to fix the mistakes of the past by making better decisions, ensuring cases are properly tracked, improving intelligence and speeding up removals.
‘I am determined to deal with the historic asylum cases left by the last government and we are making real progress tackling the archive to trace these individuals.’
Dealing with these historic cases is just one way that the government has improved the asylum system. It has also brought costs down, doubled the number of failed asylum seekers removed within one year of their application and now concludes cases quicker with almost two thirds decided within a month.