The UK government has outlined how it will utilise the new electronic visa (eVisa) system and “modern biometric technology” to support immigration enforcement and “strengthen the border”.
Published 12 May 2025, the Home Office’s 82-page immigration whitepaper – titled Restoring control over the immigration system – contains a range of proposals for how the UK government will use data-driven technologies to track migrants and clamp down on “visa abuse” by those staying and working in the country illegally.
During a press conference the same day, prime minister Kier Starmer said the whitepaper “is absolutely central to my Plan for Change”, and that it will allow the government to “take back control of our borders” after net migration quadrupled between 2019 and 2023.
“Nations depend on rules – fair rules. Sometimes they’re written down, often they’re not, but either way, they give shape to our values,” he said. “Now, in a diverse nation like ours, and I celebrate that, these rules become even more important. Without them, we risk becoming an island of strangers, not a nation that walks forward together.”
The whitepaper outlined how a key plank of the government’s overall approach would be using “newly gathered intelligence” from the UK’s new eVisa system – which has so far been plagued by data quality and integrity problems – to keep track of who is allowed to be in the country.
“The move to digital evidence of immigration status will enable us to update records in real time when status changes, ensuring those who are no longer entitled to access public services, work or rent will have this reflected on their eVisa, rather than continuing to hold physical evidence of status which is no longer up to date,” it said, adding the intelligence provided by digital visas will allow the state to “maintain and increase contact” with people as they move through the immigration system.
“Put together, the comprehensive, intelligence-led and effective roll-out of eVisas to all foreign nationals resident in the UK will have a transformative impact on our immigration controls: telling us when each individual leaves the country and when they have returned; telling us whether they have the right to work, to rent, to claim benefits or use public services, and telling us how long they have the right to stay.
“Importantly, eVisas will make it much easier for Immigration Enforcement to identify those who try to stay and work in the UK illegally, to track them down and take action against them.”
The government added it will also “continue to harness the latest developments in artificial intelligence [AI], facial recognition and age assessment technologies” to gather “the most accurate information” possible on every individual entering the UK, and that work is ongoing to enhance the accuracy and quality of the data held to ensure people’s status information remains up to date.
Enny Choudhury, co-head of legal at the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI), said the government’s push to expand eVisa and biometric surveillance “is yet another step towards a dystopian immigration regime where people who’ve made the UK home are tracked, monitored and targeted simply because of their immigration status”.
She added that the tools have nothing to do with security and are instead about giving the illusion of control: “Used alongside immigration raids and enforcement crackdowns, they will deepen mistrust, isolate communities, and expose people to errors and abuse in an already chaotic system. The eVisa roll-out has already shown itself to be riven with errors, and has left many unable to prove their status.
“If ministers were serious about fairness, they’d invest in clear, compassionate immigration routes – not surveillance infrastructure that treats people as threats, not neighbours.”
Computer Weekly contacted the Home Office about the criticisms levied against the whitepaper’s technology proposals, but received no response.
Issues with eVisa
While the government claims in the whitepaper that “the transition to eVisa has been successfully providing a significantly better end-to-end experience for individuals throughout their entire journey”, the system ran into problems almost immediately.
Within the first few weeks of the eVisa system going live, for example, many reported issues when flying back to the UK, with travellers struggling to prove their immigration status to airport staff.
Others have reported issues from within the UK as well, including with GPs not accepting the share codes issued via their UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI) digital account, which people are supposed to be able to use to prove their immigration status when dealing with a range of third parties, including employers and letting agencies.
The issues are also affecting refugees, who are reportedly having problems connecting their passports to their online visa, according to digital rights groups supporting them.
Other refugees are also unable to set up or log in to their UKVI accounts – which they need to set up a bank account, claim benefits or rent housing – as they have not been forwarded the necessary details by the Home Office.
“As a result of the flawed e-visa scheme, people with the legal right to be in the UK have been held at airports, denied jobs and even made homeless. Others are having to rely on [Biometric Resident Permit] documents that expired over five months ago,” said Sara Alsherif, the migrant rights programme manager at Open Rights Group (ORG).
“It is outrageous that the government has the audacity to refer to the shambolic eVisa scheme as ‘successful’. But it’s beyond comprehension that they are considering relying on this flawed scheme to carry out raids and deport people.
“With the use of technology, automated decision-making and AI, we can expect to see a Windrush scandal on steroids, and the Labour government really needs to ask whether it wants to be the architect of such human rights abuses.”
Digital rights campaigners have long contended that the online-only, real-time nature of the Home Office’s eVisa scheme – which trawls dozens of disparate government databases to generate a new immigration status each time someone logs in – is error-prone and “deeply problematic”.
“When users enter their details to log into the Government View and Prove system [in their UKVI account], they are not accessing their status directly, but rather their credentials are being used to search and retrieve dozens of different records held on them across different databases,” said ORG in a September 2024 report.
It added that research has identified more than 90 different platforms and casework systems that immigration data may be pulled from within the UKVI ecosystem to determine a person’s status: “View and Prove uses an algorithmic and probabilistic logic to determine which data to extract and which e-records to use when it encounters multiple records, i.e. in instances where people have renewed or changed their immigration status, or appealed an incorrect decision.
“It is these real-time and opaque automated checks that generate a person’s immigration status, which they can then share with an employer, landlord or international carrier.”
The ORG said the online-only design choice creates multiple problems for users, including making it “impossible” for an individual to be certain that they will get a correct result on any particular occasion; increased potential for incorrect decisions as a result of people’s records being pulled from “numerous servers”: and the details of two different people being conflated in instances where they, for example, share the same name or date of birth.
Greater use of biometrics
In its whitepaper, the government also outlined proposals to deploy “modern biometric technology” to frontline immigration enforcement officers, specifically highlighting that they will play a role in facilitating immigration raids.
It added that, over the coming months, it would also roll out bodyworn video cameras to frontline teams, “together with an advanced data management system and improved mobile biometric kits, improving identity verification, transparency, accountability and officer safety”.
It claimed that, taken together, “these improvements will provide an objective record of interactions, strengthen evidence gathering and increase public confidence in enforcement activity while supporting the professional standards of our staff”.
According to a blog post published by home secretary Yvette Cooper – which does not mention the extensive tech-related proposals contained in the whitepaper – the new requirements laid out in the document will “[restore] order to a failed system that saw net migration quadruple between 2019 and 2023.”
These measures include raising the skilled worker threshold, ending overseas recruitment for social care visas, reducing the length of time graduates can stay in the UK after studying, new penalties for businesses employing workers illegally, and streamlining the deportation process to further increase “returns of foreign national offenders”.
The government has also outlined how it will prevent the “dependents” of immigrants from coming to the country if they are not proficient enough in English.
Fizza Qureshi, CEO of the Migrants’ Rights Network told Computer Weekly that “immigration raids are a racist fear mechanism that disproportionately impact migrant and racialised communities”, and that the use of eVisas, Electronic Travel Authorizations (ETAs) and increased biometric data collection has been “an insidious tool” to create a database of migrants.
“We were unsure of how it would be used to further surveil migrants and intensify enforcement operations,” she said. “Now, we finally know the measures set out in the new immigration whitepaper will be weaponised to further target and terrorise migrants and racialised people.”
Tech sector employment
Responding to the whitepaper, trade unions and trade associations highlighted how the proposed measures could also undermine the UK’s ambitions to create a thriving, world-leading technology sector by undercutting access to talent and skills.
“Continually increasing visa costs and requirements has the potential to undermine efforts to attract critically important collaboration and could undermine success in AI, tech, science, engineering and a host of other areas,” said Sue Ferns, deputy general secretary at the Prospect union.
Antony Walker, deputy CEO of TechUK, added that the UK tech sector’s continued success is linked to the diverse talent it attracts from around the world: “As the demand for skilled workers in fields such as AI, cyber security, and quantum continues to grow, it is crucial that the UK grants and maintains immigration pathways that enable tech companies to access the talent they need.
“A well-designed and fairly priced visa system is essential to maintaining the UK’s global competitiveness. We have the opportunity to reassess the UK’s immigration system to enhance public confidence and better support businesses. In particular, reviewing costs associated with visas and other related charges such as the Immigration Skills Charge could help ensure the system is not only fair but also effective.
“If government wants to reduce reliance on the immigration system, it must urgently invest in skills and training, otherwise businesses will be left without the workforce they need to survive and grow.”
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