Today’s Home Office-related coverage include measures introduced in the banking sector to crackdown on illegal immigration and the conviction of illegal immigrant Kerim Koroglu.
Immigration Act banking measures
Writing in the Telegraph, Immigration Minister Caroline Nokes explained measures introduced as part of the Immigration Act 2016, to make it harder for illegal immigrants to remain in the UK. She said that bank and building societies will begin to voluntarily carry out regular immigration checks on current account holders and will be checked against the details of known illegal immigrants, which the Home Office shares with anti-fraud organisation Cifas.
A comment from the Immigration Minister can be found below.
Immigration Minister Caroline Nokes said:
These new measures are part of our commitment to make it more difficult for people with no right to live or work in the UK to remain here.
This will not affect those who are in the UK legally but we must be firm with those who break the rules as illegal immigration impacts the whole of society. Those living and working in the UK illegally can drive down the wages of lawful workers, allow rogue employers to undercut legitimate businesses and put pressure on taxpayer-funded public services.
By tackling abuse in this way, we can build an immigration system which works in the best interests of the country and prevents vulnerable people from finding themselves at risk of exploitation.
Kerim Koroglu court case
The Express and Times report on the court case of Kerim Koroglu who was convicted for 30 months yesterday (Thursday 11 January) at the Old Bailey for obtaining false documentation and obtaining property by deception.
The papers note that Koroglu came to the UK illegally and was denied asylum in 2002. According to court reports, he obtained a fake leave to remain letter which he used to defraud Hackney Council out of £32,000. The papers say Judge Oliver Sells QC was critical of the Home Office for its handling of the immigration case, noting that the department “lost” his file and that Koroglu should have been deported when his asylum case was rejected and he exhausted his appeal rights.
A Home Office comment can be found below.
A Home Office spokesperson said:
This particular case dates back to 2002 when the Home Office was more reliant on physical files. Since then our system has been modernised and improved as a result of digital immigration records.
Foreign nationals who abuse our hospitality by committing crimes in the UK should be in no doubt of our determination to deport them and we have removed more than 40,000 foreign offenders since 2010.