History of UK immigration control

Political alarm was also expressed regarding the rising numbers of foreign national criminals in UK prisons, the growing demands on poor relief within local parishes and fears of degenerating health and housing conditions.

In April 1915 an Order in Council was made that no alien passenger was to be allowed to land unless he held either a passport with a photograph attached issued within the two preceding years, or some other document establishing his national status and identity.

In 1916 a “Traffic Index” was created from the landing and embarkation cards collected at ports and matched together at the Home Office's Aliens Branch HQ to show whether the person had complied with their conditions of entry.

It also targeted criminals, paupers and ‘undesirables’, and made it illegal for aliens to promote industrial action – a response to fears of imported revolutionaries following the still recent Russian Revolution.

The possibility of enemy agents gaining entry under the guise of being part of this group was very real and Immigration Service staff were seconded to interview refugees and displaced people at special reception centres.

Staff were also later deployed to Poole to deal with flying boat services which flew routes to Lisbon via Ireland and were of especial interest because of those seeking to exit occupied Europe.

Scottish immigration staff also covered the airports at Dyce and Leuchars, (which played their part as terminals for the dangerous Mosquito service to Stockholm), and found themselves occasionally giving a reception to escaped resistance fighters arriving in the Shetland Islands.

The 1950s brought special challenges such as the influx of visitors for the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953, a year which also saw the opening of the new passenger car ferry terminal at Eastern Docks, Dover.

The report discussed the possibility that the British public might react badly to a law that was seen to be overtly racist and attempted to address the central difficulty of putting legislation into place that met its aims without appearing to be racially motivated.

Other developing trends included bogus marriages and forged birth certificates which were designed to allow “children” to join relatives in the UK as dependants despite being clearly above the permitted age.

[22] The notorious and highly emotive Rivers of Blood speech by Enoch Powell in 1968 changed the political landscape for anyone attempting to consider practical, administrative issues for many years to come.

To investigate the complexities of the applications within a port of entry control environment was far from ideal and the Service was criticised for insensitivity in its dealings with these cases, especially in the misuse of medical examinations.

On 1 September 1986, new visa restrictions were announced for India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria and Ghana as the UK leading to further racial exclusion from Africa and Asia in favour of white EU nations.

The ensuing panic over the weeks in between the announcement and implementation of the new rules brought Heathrow Airport to a standstill and the evening television news bulletins contained footage of hundreds of detainees camped in the main arrivals hall at Terminal 3 awaiting processing.

Its use provoked hostile opposition but the Home Office pressed forward with the idea and the Earl William was contracted into service under the management of Securicor, who had been running immigration detention facilities since 1970.

The fall of the Berlin Wall brought with it a new political landscape, opened up travel routes long closed and meant the re-emergence of nationalities which had been submerged within the Soviet bloc.

In 1998, the new Labour administration published a white paper titled Fairer, faster and firmer - a modern approach to immigration and asylum which promised an expansion of the detention estate.

One of the major successes of recent times had been the establishment by the Immigration Service of a team of Airline Liaison Officers whose job was to stop inadmissible passengers at their point of departure abroad.

In February 2000 the Parliamentary Home Affairs Select Committee, (HAC), started a wide-ranging enquiry into the reasons for the rise in asylum and the way that IND and the Immigration Service had handled the issues.

During the course of collating evidence for the enquiry the HAC visited the Red Cross centre at Sangatte near Calais and saw for themselves the numbers of would-be refugees waiting to try and enter the UK clandestinely.

The issues were pushed higher up the political agenda by an awful tragedy that took place on 19 June that year when 58 Chinese people were found dead in the back of a sealed lorry at Dover.

The then–Home Secretary, Jack Straw, promised tough action[65] but, a court ruled in 2004 that, under Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, they could not be sent back to Afghanistan because their lives would be endangered.

The ruling that allowed the hijackers to stay was described by the Prime Minister as an "abuse of common sense", and the Home Secretary blamed it on misinterpretation the Human Rights Act 1998 which had come into force in 2000.

A report to the Home Affairs Committee by the IND Intelligence Section, (INDIS), noted that there was a general consensus among European law enforcement agencies that provision of such documents was being conducted on a commercial level and that, “the gangs have transferred the knowledge, facilities and networks used for smuggling drugs and other commodities to a highly profitable new endeavour.

The gradual impact of more visas being issued abroad and the greater emphasis on screening people pre-entry reduced the figure, as did the general fall in non-EEA passenger from its peak in 2000.

[74] In many ways this was a continuation of the modernisation policies set out in its predecessor Fairer, Firmer, Faster in that it outlined plans for more electronic mechanisation of the controls such as iris recognition, heartbeat sensors, backscatter X-ray and gamma ray scanners which would be used at Dover and Coquelles to spot hidden illegal entrants.

But to ensure that we sustain the positive contribution of migration to our social well-being and economic prosperity, we need to manage it properly and build firmer foundations on which integration with diversity can be achieved”, and; “The Government will initiate and open and constructive debate about citizenship, civic identity and shared values”.

[clarification needed] The rules on young people coming for “working holidays” were to be relaxed and a new, “Seasonal Agricultural Workers Scheme” introduced which would be extended across the economy with set quotas for industries short of labour.

The wider impact on IND and the Home Office was to undermine the positive work that had been achieved in restoring its reputation in the wake of the asylum crisis and once again damage its credibility and operational integrity.

The 2005 white paper “Controlling Our Borders - Making Migration Work for Britain” outlined the new “e-Borders” programme; It went on to explain how this would be achieved; This was a hugely ambitious project to join up various agencies and use both public and private data, both inside and outside the UK, in ways that had never been attempted before.