How do we fix the UK’s broken visa system?

Our visa system defines, in a literal sense, who our neighbours are. Who we share our country, our communities and our public services with.

In the past couple of years, it has allowed an inflow of people into our country roughly equivalent to the population of Birmingham. Many of those people will be hugely talented and bring great value to the UK; but many will not. That’s because our visa system is a patchwork of creaking policies, filled with loopholes, and almost entirely unenforceable.

It is a high trust system in a low trust world.

That’s why I wrote my report, Backdoors to Britain, into the visa system back in March and it is why I brought a Westminster Hall Debate this week to raise the profile of the problems with the immigration system.

Problems like the fact that visa holders do not have to keep the Home Office informed of their current home address. That National Insurance numbers aren’t linked to visa status, so real-time tracking of illegal working or visa non-compliance is difficult.

More fundamental problems too. “Skilled Workers” can be sponsored to come to the UK to work in vape shops, convenience stores and takeaways. We have evidence that at least some of the companies eligible to sponsor visas are selling visas, but the system is overloaded with thousands and thousands of tiny companies – 17,000 with five or fewer employees – which makes any kind of systematic attempt to enforce compliance almost impossible.

Employers who break the rules repeatedly can be back sponsoring visas in as little as two years. And company directors responsible for rule-breaking companies can set up new companies and get themselves a new sponsorship license.

Many organisations sponsoring visas are public bodies – at a time when more than a million young people are unemployed.

Thousands of visas are being issued for religious and charity work, with miniscule financial requirements.

We have created a visa system where it is easier for a non-Brit to bring their non-British spouse to the UK than it is for a British citizen.

We take the second most international students in the world, with universities given a commercial incentive to drive up student visa numbers; but many of those students are going to low-ranked universities, obtaining degrees of dubious merit, and then able to stay and work in whatever job they choose through the Graduate Visa. And universities, with that commercial incentive, set their own standards for English language testing.

And set against all of those existing problems, the current Government are weakening the security of English language testing for visa applicants. Moving to a remote and digital by default system which is so unsecure that a leading British consortium pulled out of the bid to run it, citing security concerns. That system was created after sustained lobbying from Duolingo, now the favourite to win the contract, via Peter Mandelson’s firm Global Counsel.

I could say more, but I think the picture is clear. Tinkering around the edges of the system is not going to restore trust in it. What we need is a wholesale re-think of the visa system we have created. Creating in its place a system which is manageable, transparent and which delivers the right result: welcoming the best and brightest to the UK, but closing the door to people who wouldn’t benefit our country.

If that sounds controversial, it shouldn’t. It is the norm in virtually every other country on the planet.

Amongst many other things, we must stop the public sector recruiting from abroad unless they are recruiting a genuinely world class talent; we must stop tiny companies sponsoring visas and limit the proportion of a workforce which can be on visas; we must permanently revoke the license of rogue employers; we must reset student visas and graduate visas to focus on the best and brightest; and we must ensure that English language testing is secure.

Our visa system decides who our neighbours are and who we share our communities with. We must make sure that it is a system which puts the interests of the British people first.