§ The Minister for Citizenship and Immigration (Beverley Hughes)I have today made a technical amendment to the authorisation under section 19D of the Race Relations Act which enables immigration officers to prioritise arriving passengers for examination and immigration offenders for removal on the ground of nationality. The change is that nationalities will be 5WS prioritised if adverse decisions and immigration breaches reach more than 50 in total and five of every 1,000 admitted persons of a particular nationality.
The change is necessary to keep the system of prioritisation manageable in the light of improvements to data collection. We do not anticipate that this will make a significant difference to the number of nationalities prioritised and decisions will continue to be made on the individual merits of each case.
§ The Minister for Citizenship and Immigration (Beverley Hughes)I have today made an authorisation under section 19D of the Race Relations Act 1976 (as amended) which will enable immigration officers to prioritise the examination of passengers of Somali national origin. For a period of three months this will allow such people to be examined more rigorously than would otherwise be the case.
The purpose of this measure is to enable the immigration service to obtain information on the number and profiles of Somali-born passengers entering the UK. The aim of this measure is to establish how the large numbers of in-country asylum applicants claiming as Somali, apparently without documentation, enter the UK.
§ The Minister for Citizenship and Immigration (Beverley Hughes)I have today made an authorisation under section 19D of the Race Relations Act 1976 as amended which enables the Home Office to implement measures targeting the top five nationalities in terms of third country/Dublin cases for additional examination on the grounds of nationality.
This change will enable officials to compare the fingerprints of asylum seekers of these five nationalities against other governments' fingerprint databases of asylum seekers, failed asylum seekers and those granted some form of leave to remain.
This change also allows officials to compare the details of asylum seekers from the five prioritised nationalities with the details of individuals originally from those countries but now holding a form of immigration status elsewhere who have been granted a visa to travel to the UK.
The purpose of these measures is to identify individuals who have claimed asylum, are failed asylum seekers or absconders, or who already have some form of status in another country and who subsequently claim asylum in the UK.
Iraq, Turkey, Iran, Somalia and Sudan were the top five nationalities subject to third country/Dublin action in the last six months of 2003. This means that other EU member states are properly responsible to consider the asylum claim of the individuals concerned. Any individuals identified under these processes may be returned to the safe third country identified as responsible for them under existing immigration law.
6WSAny individuals identified under these processes may be returned to the safe third country identified as responsible for them under existing immigration law.