London, 18 Sept 2024 /Open Rights Group /  — As reported in the Guardian, today ORG has published a new report, E-Visas: Hostile and Broken, which examines the Home Office’s plans to roll out e-Visas for migrants in the UK.

As our report shows, this is a deeply flawed IT project, which could lead to a digital Windrush scandal where people will be unable to prove their right to be in the UK because of data errors, system crashes and Internet outages.Read the report

The term e-Visa is misleading. In reality, migrants’ physical documents will be replaced with a proof of status that is checked in real-time whenever they need to prove their status. Using algorithmic guesswork, application records will be live matched and rematched across multiple databases. This is intentional, supposedly to identify people who don’t have the right to be in the UK as quickly as possible. But it carries the risk of potentially tens or hundreds of thousands of errors that will impact people in life-changing ways.

As with the Windrush scandal, these errors could mean that people are refused jobs or education, unable to rent or buy a home, or denied entry into the UK.

We need to take urgent action
The e-Visa scheme has been poorly communicated with many people not even aware that they need to register by the end of the year.

We need the Home Office to act now to stop the scheme and allow people to have physical documents as well as digital proof of their right to be in the UK.

You can help us put the pressure on by emailing your MP and asking them to raise concerns about e-Visas with the Home Office.

With enough pressure, we can force the Home Office to stop these plans and prevent another Windrush scandal!

We hope that you like the report and thank you for supporting digital rights.

Source:
Sara Alsherif
Migrant Digital Justice Programme Manager
Open Rights Group