Foreign nationals who wish to stay in the UK will be
issued with a compulsorybiometric ID cardwithin a year, the
home office minister, Liam Byrne, said today.
The
scheme is one of 10 measures announced today that aims to
tighten control of the presence and movement of foreigners in the
UK.
The plan fleshes out the government's £1.2bn
e-Borders project whose technology components were awarded to a
Rayethon consortium just before
Christmas.
Announcing the 10-point plan, Byrne said the government
aimed
• within 15 days to check fingerprints before a visa is issued
anywhere in the world
• within 60 days to introduce on-the-spot fines for employers
who do not make the correct right-to-work checks
• within 80 days to begin the introduction of a new points
system for managing migration
• within 100 days to introduce a single border force and
police-like powers for frontline staff
• within 180 days to confirm the number of foreign national
prisoners deported in 2008 will exceed 2007
• within 200 days to activate powers to automatically deport
foreign national prisoners
• within 300 days to expand detention capacity
• within 330 days to begin issuing compulsory ID cards for those
foreign nationals who want to stay
• by Christmas to begin counting foreign nationals in and out of
the country and to introduce compulsory watch-list checks for high
risk journeys before they land, and
• within 360 days to make and enforce 60% of asylum decisions
within six months, with alternatives to detention for children.
Byrne said the government has taken biometric fingerprints from
more than one million people. So far 10,000 visa applicants have
been identified who have previously been fingerprinted in the UK in
connection with immigration cases or asylum applications.
See also:
No2ID
International Biometric
Group