Fingerprinting visa applicants

This morning (14 January 2008) the immigration minister Liam Byrne announced that everyone applying for a visa to come to the United Kingdom will be required to provide his or her fingerprints.  This obligation will be enforced immediately. 

This measure was announced shortly before Christmas, when it was stated that from the spring of this year all visa applicants would be fingerprinted.  This morning’s announcement is therefore to the effect that the system has been brought in three months early and under budget.  The minister took the opportunity to remind people of the already much heralded introduction in April of this year of Tier 1 of the points based system for the determination of visa applications, and other measures including the implementation of a unified border force 

UK staff working overseas will check the applicant’s digital fingerprint scan against existing records to see whether there is a match against “people of concern”.  There has been compulsory fingerprinting for visa applicants in just under 50% of countries since 2006, and in August of last year the government announced that of 500,000 prints taken 6,000 had been matched against “people of concern”.   It is understood that the aim of these measures is to deter identity fraudsters, illegal immigrants and other criminals, and to track the movements of terrorist suspects.