Staff told to give deportation of foreign students low status

Immigration officers have been told not to deport routinely foreign students who overstay their visas, it was reported last night.

A memo sent to the Border and Immigration Agency’s regional directors tells them not to enforce the rules unless the students are deemed to be priorities. The agency said that those involved in fraud would be deported.

The document describes a rule change that makes students who overstay automatically liable for refusal if they seek a visa extension. It says that Lin Homer, the chief executive of the agency, made “critical comments” about the decision to enforce the removal of students and had intervened personally to stop one deportation.

The memo, written by Jonathan Lindley, the agency’s director of enforcement, and leaked to the Daily Mail, said: “I am surprised that any of these cases have come sufficiently high within enforcement teams’ priorities to merit such quick removal action. Please instruct your enforcement teams not to proceed with enforcing any student refusal cases unless they are deemed, at at least inspector level, to be a priority.”

Last year 309,000 foreign citizens came to study in Britain. There are no figures of how many remained after their student visa expired.

Ms Homer said in a statement: “The case that prompted this memo concerned a student who entered the wrong credit card details on an application that was submitted within time.”

David Davis, the Shadow Home Secretary, said: “It is astonishing that warped government priorities are dictating that our immigration authorities turn a blind eye to those with no right to stay in the UK.”