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Immigration reform details - strengthening our borders

More details about what we're doing to reform the immigration system.

The UK's borders have already been significantly strengthened since the Immigration review was published in July 2006.

Read more about our progress in meeting the immigration reform commitments we made in July 2006.

Millions are carefully checked

Pre-arrival checks are now carried out on selected high-risk flights on 72 routes, which means that approximately 20.5 million passenger movements are checked, and that number is increasing; we aim to cover 20 million passenger movements by April 2008. These checks means that only those who have permission to come to the UK are admitted, which helps keep the country safer. 

The global rollout of biometric visas is on schedule in 63 countries. Biometric visas are issued overseas so that we can know without a doubt who the people entering the UK really are, and so that we can tell absolutely whether they are entitled to come to this country.

More than 70,000 travellers have already voluntarily enrolled to the Trusted Traveller scheme, which enables regular and registered visitors to move quickly through our border controls.

Asylum intake already down

We have made huge progress on reducing asylum intake, which is now at its lowest level for many years.

In 2006, we achieved the target of removing more unfounded asylum claimants than new anticipated unfounded applications, and we know it's vital that we shouldn't lose momentum. Dedicated casework teams have now been created to deal with asylum cases, and more teams will be assigned to this programme later this year.

We have 25 regional teams in place to deal with asylum cases quickly, removing people who do not qualify, and also helping genuine refugees integrate into our society as smoothly as possible.

Cross-government enforcement strategy agreed

Enforcing the rules: A strategy to ensure compliance with our immigration laws was published on 7 March 2007.

Key elements of this strategy include:

• creating immigration crime partnerships across the country
• shutting down the privileged of the UK to those here illegally
• develop links with Crimestoppers to allow the public to report alleged abuses of immigration rules
• building on the illegal working campaign already delivered, work is in progress for a visible public education programme

Border and Immigration Agency

The Immigration and Nationality Directorate has now been turned into the Border and Immigration Agency (new window) - a shadow agency established on 2 April 2007. We are now building the regional infrastructure for the shadow agency, and have recruited the regional directors who will help us improve performance and develop stronger links with communities.

We will continue to work towards creating the fair, effective, transparent immigration system the public deserve.