Student suspects: How migration officials are passing on fingerprints to the police
Article published: Friday, March 19th 2010
International students forced to give fingerprints for biometric identity cards are having their details run through police criminal records, it emerged today.
Fingerprints are now routinely taken when students apply for visas to study in the UK but as well as running the information through UKBA records they are being cross referenced with the national police database.
The information was accidentally given to the No2ID campaign when the Post Office failed to fully redact documents handed over under the Freedom of Information Act about visas.
Phil Booth from No2ID told the audience at the Students not Suspects campaign teach-in at Goldsmiths University in London’s New Cross tonight (Thursday) that data held by UK agencies could “leak” to foreign governments.
“The consequences of data being leaked in other parts of the world could have much more significant and much more dangerous for the individual concerned,” he said.
Treated appallingly
Human rights lawyer Frances Webber from the Institute for Race Relations said universities must refuse to police international students by checking their immigration status.
She said: “The worst the UK Border Agency can do is withdraw their license. What is needed is a critical mass of colleges and universities that just say no. If we can get a critical mass there is no way the Home Office can to do this.”
She added the government is “making an absolutely vast amount of money off the student visas.”
Les Back, an academic at Goldsmiths and University and Colleges Union (UCU) member said Britain was moving away form universities being cultural centres and becoming “centres of excellence” which were almost “contentless”.
Meanwhile students applying from overseas are treated appallingly and have to prove to immigration officials that they have thousands of pounds resting in their accounts – “more than the dean of the faculty would have.”
Habib Rahman from the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants invited students form Goldsmiths to join the charity’s I Love Migrants campaign by attending its offices tomorrow at 2pm in Old Street.
Brendan Montague
This article first appeared on the-sauce.org and can be found here
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