Last week it emerged that the UKBA ignored 3,077 leads from the Police National Computer regarding missing asylum seekers. This failing came to light after Home Secretary, Theresa May, requested an investigation into the performance of the UKBA after a report highlighted serious failings at the UKBA.
The concept that the UKBA have overlooked thousands of migrants will come as no surprise to those with any experience of dealing with the UKBA, however usually this results in encumbrances to migrants (being forced to go months without their passports or being erroneously informed of their imminent removal from the UK for example) rather than amnesty.
The investigation also revealed that work had not been started on archived cases and active reviews reopened due to information acquired from the Police National Computer.
With a backlog of 42,000 legacy asylum cases in addition to masses of applications under a range of Immigration categories, it has been suggested that it is impossible to tackle the backlog and make the UKBA an efficient entity. True or not, it is clear there needs to be further change in how the UKBA operates in order to improve its performance.