1905 Aliens Act and the Immigration Boards

The beginnings of the modern-day UK immigration control can be traced from the final decade of the 19th century and the political debate that grew surrounding the perceived growth in the numbers of Eastern European Jews coming to the UK. Political alarm was also expressed regarding the rising numbers of foreign national criminals in UK prisons, the growing demands on poor relief within local parishes and fears of degenerating health and housing conditions.^[1]

There was particular focus on the large numbers of Russian and Polish Jews who had arrived in the East End of London after fleeing persecution in the Russian Empire. In 1898 the Secretary of the Board of Trade reported a "..stream of Russian and Polish immigration—in other words, the immigration of the most destitute type...increasing in volume year by year". The numbers of arrivals were highly debatable owing to the deficiencies in available statistics. Concerns focussed on perceived overcrowding in the East End of London.^[2][3]

The legislation that finally emerged was the Aliens Act 1905. It was easily evaded,^[4] and did not even require Immigration Officers to give written permission to land or stamp a passport – permission to land was given verbally.

It was, however, the first legislation to define some groups of migrants as 'undesirable', thereby making entry to the United Kingdom discretionary, rather than automatic. The Act ensured that leave to land could be withheld if the immigrant was judged to fall into one of four categories:

• a) if he cannot show that he has in his possession ... the means of decently supporting himself and his dependents;
• b) if he is a lunatic or an idiot or owing to any disease of infirmity liable to become a charge upon the public rates;
• c) if he has been sentenced in a foreign country for a crime, not being an offence of a political character; or
• d) if an expulsion order under this act has [already] been made.

People refused entry under the act were given a right of appeal to the Immigration Board in charge of control of one of the designated ports listed by statute and the practical application of the control was conducted by the new Aliens Inspectorate and its officers, the first Immigration Officers, who were hurriedly recruited from within the existing ranks of HM Customs and the Board of Trade. Their basic task was to test whether the traveler had means of support which might be proven by either presentation of cash or evidence of a firm offer of employment. The inspection generally took place aboard ships or in “receiving houses” on shore. The anomalies within the regulations meant that it was common for passengers to evade the control by the simple means of posing as 2nd or 3rd class passengers or sharing the evidence of funds between them. The head of the new organization was titled HM Inspector and its first incumbent was Mr. William Haldane Porter.

1914–1918: Immigration control during the First World War

1914 marked a landmark in UK immigration control in that it was only from this point that every person entering the country had to produce evidence of identity. The 1914 Aliens Registration Act was rushed through Parliament in a single day on the eve of the First World War and allowed stricter controls than before including the power to make aliens aged over 16 register with the police.^[5] The power still remains in use.^[6] Although the 1905 Act technically survived until its repeal in 1919, it was, in practice, submerged by the far more stringent powers of the Aliens Restriction Act of 1914. The 1914 Act contained a clause which gave the Home Secretary power to prevent the entry and order the deportation of aliens if it was deemed 'conducive to the public good'. For the purposes of the 1914 legislation immigration officers were re-titled Aliens Officers and the service was a compound of Home Office staff and Customs staff.

In order to mark someone's arrival and departure the new Aliens Officers endorsed the passports of passengers with red stamps on arrival and with black stamps to cancel the endorsement on the persons departure. In April 1915 an Order in Council was made that no alien passenger was to be allowed to land unless he held either a passport with a photograph attached issued within the two preceding years, or some other document establishing his national status and identity. Prior to this passports had not contained photographs and had not been stamped in any way.^[7]

From April 1915 only passengers with exit permits were allowed to leave the UK, and then only from certain ports. In an extension to their duties that would be repeated during the Second World War, officers were tasked with retrieving ration documents from departing passengers. In 1916 a “Traffic Index” was created from the landing and embarkation cards collected at ports and matched together at the Home Office's Aliens Branch HQ to show whether the person had complied with their conditions of entry. This simple process was the only mechanism for measuring the effectiveness of the control and continued until 1998 when embarkation controls were abolished. By 1920, the number of Aliens' Officers had reached 160.^[8]

Immigration controls in the 1920s and 1930s

The Aliens Order 1920 was a statutory instrument made under the 1919 Aliens Restriction Act. Brought out in the context of widespread unemployment after the First World War, it required all aliens seeking employment or residence to register with the police. The Order drew its powers from the 1919 Act and granted a wide-ranging discretion to the Home Secretary. It stipulated that no alien might land without the permission of an immigration officer, by way of a passport stamp, and granted powers to attach conditions to the grant of leave, to refuse those who could not support themselves, and their dependants, those medically unfit and those convicted of crimes abroad. It gave the power to demand documents satisfactorily establishing identity and nationality. It restricted the employment rights of aliens resident in Britain, barring them from certain jobs (in the civil service, for example), and had a particular impact on foreign seamen working on British ships. It required people seeking employment in the UK to obtain permission from the Ministry of Labour, which was of huge significance in establishing a link, for the first time, between immigration control and the employment market. It also targeted criminals, paupers and ‘undesirables’, and made it illegal for aliens to promote industrial action – a response to fears of imported revolutionaries following the still recent Russian Revolution. Further motivation to extend restrictions on foreigners was driven by post-war unemployment and the consequent desire to safeguard jobs for indigenous Britons. The 1919 Act was renewed annually until 1971 until it was replaced by the Immigration Act 1971.

A new dimension to the work arrived in the 1920s where the influx of visitors to the Wembley Exhibition meant that the traffic generated by air travel could no longer be ignored. It was decided to appoint one immigration officer to deal with incoming passengers at the main London airport in Croydon. By 1925 the Immigration Officer at Croydon Airport was dealing with 15 aircraft movements per day. By 1937 the total numbers of people arriving by air reached 37,348, still a paltry number when compared to the numbers arriving by sea, 498,326.^[9] The numbers arriving at seaports would continue to rise, but would be outstripped by the late 1950s by the rise of air travel.

The 1930s were marked by the ever-increasing numbers of refugees arriving from Europe fleeing from Nazi Germany. Refugee arrivals rose from close to zero in 1930 to 3109 in 1933. By 1938 the annual figure was 11,000. After 1936 the figures were augmented by the numbers fleeing from war-torn Spain. Although there was no publicly stated policy for the admission of political refugees before 1971, a settled but implicit approach had emerged during the 1930s. The handling of refugees was largely dependent on their being able to show that they could maintain themselves or be maintained. The Immigration Service cooperated with the Jewish support organizations who worked to provide support or provide sponsors but there was no agreed international approach to the handling of refugees. A Home Secretary memo to the Cabinet in 1933 shows that efforts were made to take a flexible approach but admitted that some refugees, ("a few") had been refused and returned to France where they awaited a relaxation of the rules. Restrictions placed on Jewish refugees were based mainly on economic fears for the employment market.^[10]

Statistics for 1938 and 1939 show Germans as being the top nationality refused entry for both years^[11] and it is likely that a large proportion of these were potential refugees being returned to an uncertain fate. That said, the UK admitted more Germans than any other nationality in 1939 and continued to admit Germans throughout the war.^[12]

In late November 1938 the UK Parliament agreed to allow up to 15,000 unaccompanied children to enter Britain as refugees from the Nazis. Almost 10,000 such children from several European countries, but principally from Germany, were rescued by Britain in what became known as the Kindertransport. The first transport left Germany in December 1938 with most ending at the outbreak of war, but a final Kindertransport left the Netherlands in May 1940.

An ever-increasing number of passengers travelled in happier circumstances on the great liners of the day. The RMS Queen Mary for instance presented problems in quickly clearing large numbers of passengers and to do so within Victorian Customs Sheds was increasingly impractical. Shipping companies invited a solution whereby Immigration Officers travelled 1st class on the liner itself or pre-cleared passengers in Cherbourg. In 1936 air traffic had grown to such an extent that a Chief Immigration Officer was appointed to take charge at Croydon Airport with additional responsibilities for immigration control in the new Gatwick terminal, which with its very own direct rail link to London and art deco architecture was the last word in airport design until it was replaced in the 1950s.

1939–1945: Immigration control during the Second World War

War brought with it new emergency powers which meant that the Immigration Service now, as well as continuing to control the entry of a wave of displaced people, had to screen refugees, enforce rules on exit permits for all people leaving the UK and to take on the additional work of repatriating some enemy aliens. Ireland's neutrality meant that steps had to be taken to introduce new controls between the UK and Republic. The Passenger Traffic Order 1939 remained in force until 1952 and a large proportion of the work of the immigration service during the war was taken up by the control of Irish workers seeking employment in the growing war economy.

Croydon Airport was closed and became a fighter base; its passenger traffic transferred to Shoreham. The Dunkirk evacuation brought with it not only rescued troops but also vast numbers of refugees and displaced people who had to be screened. Large numbers of Dutch and Belgian refugees were temporarily placed in camps on Brownsea Island in Poole harbour. The possibility of enemy agents gaining entry under the guise of being part of this group was very real and Immigration Service staff were seconded to interview refugees and displaced people at special reception centres. The main one of these was the Royal Victoria Patriotic School at Wandsworth in London, whose MI6 interrogators included Colonel Oreste Pinto.^[13] During four years over 30,000 people were interviewed at this centre. Other wartime work involving Immigration staff included the examination of British refugees exchanged with the Germans via Lisbon.

As the passenger traffic through the channel ports shrank, the efforts of border control were focused on the merchant shipping that kept Britain's lifelines open and many staff were redeployed to Scottish ports, Bristol and English northern ports for the duration. An office was also set up at Dartmouth to deal with the Channel convoys. Staff were also later deployed to Poole to deal with flying boat services which flew routes to Lisbon via Ireland and were of especial interest because of those seeking to exit occupied Europe.

In Scotland the great "Queens" brought troop ships containing up to 15,000 troops each. The ports of Glasgow and Gourock pooled their resources to deal with the Russian convoys. Scottish immigration staff also covered the airports at Dyce and Leuchars, (which played their part as terminals for the dangerous Mosquito service to Stockholm), and found themselves occasionally giving a reception to escaped resistance fighters arriving in the Shetland Islands. In the first six months of 1940 Scottish immigration officers examined almost 4000 survivors from upwards of 100 ships sunk by enemy action. Some of these were found to be spies, and duly executed.

1945–1961: Post-war growth of Commonwealth immigration

Cover from the 1949 UK Immigration Service "Handbook of the Peculiarities of Foreign Names" with introduction by HM Chief Inspector W.R. Perks. An inscription shows that it was originally issued to Mr W. Argent, HM Immigration Office, Havelock Chambers,Queen's Terrace, Southampton. It contains such useful information as advice on transliteration from the Cyrillic alphabet, advice on Russian patronymics and common Greek names in English characters.

Re-establishing normal controls after the war took time to accomplish.^[14] Dover was eventually fully staffed again after a gap of six years and Croydon airport was reopened to passenger traffic. Southampton was faced with a rising number of passenger liners returning to peacetime service. A far reaching report by the Croydon Inspector after the war reviewed the processes for dealing with the growing number of air passengers. It suggested that these should, in future, be separated into inbound and outbound control areas and that arriving passengers should be marshalled or “funnelled” into one control area regardless of what aircraft they had arrived on.

In 1946 the major airport controlling air traffic was Hurn Airport in Dorset. Although well organised, its location so far from London made it unpopular with carriers. It was agreed that the main passenger airport for London would be Heathrow, which opened on 1 May 1946 and came under the command of the Croydon Inspector. It was still a time of displaced people finding their way home after the war and passenger liners still travelled to the West Indies to return servicemen who had been de-mobbed. The owners of the shipping lines sought to reduce their costs for return journeys, which promised to otherwise have few passengers, and offered cut price fares to the UK. The first of these vessels to arrive, in 1947, was the now little remembered MV Ormonde which brought 108 migrant workers and attracted little notice. The arrival of the HMT Empire Windrush,^[15] generated far greater attention. She arrived at Tilbury and brought with her approximately 500 regular passengers and a large number of stowaways as reported by Pathe news.

Over and above the continuing movement of displaced people there were other signs of re-adjustment following the end of the war. The Polish Resettlement Act 1947 allowed 200,000 Polish citizens to stay following the war and it took until 1952 for the wartime restrictions on travel between the UK and Ireland to be abolished and a Common Travel Area was created between all the islands which still exists today. From the early 1950s immigration officers were allocated to deal with the residual screening of people who had arrived during and after the war who had still to have their status regularised.

The 1953 Aliens Order replaced the 1920 Order and consolidated various other statutory instruments since the First World War. The 1950s brought special challenges such as the influx of visitors for the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953, a year which also saw the opening of the new passenger car ferry terminal at Eastern Docks, Dover. Despite the increase in traffic the numbers of those detained on entry remained small. During the parliamentary debate for the 1953 Act the Home Secretary was asked how many people were currently in detention and advised that on 22 July 1953 the total number of immigration detainees in the UK was 11.^[16]

The position of refugees had been under review since the war. Questions had necessarily been posed as to whether more could and should have been done to save Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution. The result was the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Stateless Persons. Originally intended to encompass only European refugees it was later extended to all countries. Overlapping waves of refugees had to be dealt with in the wake of the Suez Crisis and Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Between 19 November and 3 December 1956, 4221 refugees arrived at Dover and the Immigration Service was increasingly hard pressed. At that time it numbered fewer than 400 staff, including managers, to cover 30 different ports across the United Kingdom 24 hours per day and seven days a week. In 1959, a watershed moment arrived where, for the first time, more passengers arrived by air than by sea, (741,669 to 738,367).^[9][17]

After the mid-1950s employers were prompted by a general labour shortage to recruit directly from the West Indies. The London Transport executive made an agreement with the Barbadian Immigration Liaison Service. Other employers, such as the British Hotel and Restaurant Association, made similar agreements. In the 1950s most Indian migrant workers to arrive in Britain were Sikhs from the rural areas of the Punjab, where the partition of the Punjab between India and Pakistan had created immense pressure on land resources during the 1950s and 1960s, greatly increasing such emigration from then on. In the period immediately before and after the introduction of the 1962 Act, the entry of dependents into Britain increased almost threefold as families attempted to 'beat the act', amidst widespread fears that Britain planned to permanently close its doors to its citizens in the New Commonwealth, including the families of those already living in Britain. Total "New" Commonwealth immigration thus grew from 21,550 entrants in 1959, to 58,300 in 1960. A year later this last figure had more than doubled and a record 125,400 "New" Commonwealth immigrants entered the UK in 1961.

Consideration of legislation to place controls on Commonwealth citizens had by 1960 already been under active consideration for some years. A Cabinet committee comprising senior Cabinet members including the Home Secretary produced a report in 1956 which detailed the numbers of arriving black and Asian migrants in the early 1950s.^[18] It directly addressed what it saw as the key issue of migration from "coloured territories". The report discussed the possibility that the British public might react badly to a law that was seen to be overtly racist and attempted to address the central difficulty of putting legislation into place that met its aims without appearing to be racially motivated. It noted, "There is no doubt that even though a Bill...would in form be non-discriminatory, it would nevertheless be clear against whom the Bill was really directed". The committee agreed that, presentationally, it would be best to emphasise the potential housing shortages that further migration might bring about.

1962–1968: Post-imperial restrictions

The Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962 came about as a result of growing public and political unease regarding the impact of migration from the, now fast declining, British Empire. West Indian immigration, (especially), had, since the war, continued to grow fairly gently but steadily until there were by 1956 around 100,000 new West Indian migrants in the UK. There were echoes of the public outcry which had brought about the 1905 Act and the political arguments, in public at least, similarly attempted to focus on the economic control of migrant labour and attempted to skirt around the underlying racial prejudices that were voiced by their constituents. Whatever the motivations of those concerned, it was clear that the common citizenship status shared by the various members of the Empire, or Commonwealth, as it was becoming known, was untenable with a world population growing more mobile. There was also a better understanding than there had been in 1948 that Britain's world position had irrevocably changed as it moved away from the assumptions of empire towards potential membership of the European Economic Community.

The new Act was seen by its opponents as draconian,^[19] but it created only limited powers to deal with those who misrepresented their intentions or entered illegally. Preparations to implement the new Act included a recruitment campaign in 1962 which brought the staffing of the Immigration Service up to 500 ready for the start date on 1 July 1962.

Commonwealth governments had warned that the new restrictions would create a black market in forged documentation and they were proven correct. The 1960s saw an emergent boom, in immigration terms, of bogus students. A market grew in bogus colleges and forged documents provided by racketeers who would, for a price, provide a complete package comprising travel, documents and illegal work. They commonly reclaimed their investment on a proportion of the migrant's illicit wages. Other developing trends included bogus marriages and forged birth certificates which were designed to allow “children” to join relatives in the UK as dependants despite being clearly above the permitted age.

The Immigration Branch, and the administrative HQ at Princeton House in High Holborn, were limited in their ability to combat these abuses. The entire administrative strength of the Immigration and Nationality Dept was approximately 300^[20] and before 1962 IND was divided into three "Divisions" B1, (casework), B2, (policy) and A2, (admin). In 1962 another Division was created, B3, to deal with deportation casework. No formal operational enforcement and detection structure was to come into being until the 1970s and realistic legal powers to deal with illegal migrants would not appear until 1973 with the implementation of the 1971 Act.

The quality of Entry Clearances, (Visas), issued abroad in the newly controlled Commonwealth countries also gave cause for concern when presented at British ports. The initial assumption when the 1962 Act was introduced was that these would be taken at face value on arrival. An instruction to Immigration Officers created a general understanding that written entry conditions would only be recorded and stored in exceptional circumstances. By 1965 new instructions had been issued^[21] which, although very liberal by later standards, encouraged control officers to impose conditions more often and to refuse people who had clearly obtained entry clearances by misrepresentation.^[22]

The notorious and highly emotive Rivers of Blood speech by Enoch Powell in 1968 changed the political landscape for anyone attempting to consider practical, administrative issues for many years to come. Thirty-nine Heathrow immigration officers, very unwisely, wrote to Enoch Powell in support of tougher controls whereupon he made their note public. Although their concerns were based on what they saw as a lack of administrative powers to do their job effectively they did, by associating themselves with the speech, damage their impartiality as Civil Servants and they were disciplined as a consequence.

On 8 June 1968 Immigration Officers at Heathrow detained James Earl Ray, the murderer of Martin Luther King Jr., attempting to travel on a false passport.

1968–1978: New laws and European Union membership

The key events leading to the hurried introduction of the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1968 were the independence of, first, Kenya and, later, Uganda and Tanzania. Each of these countries at independence had an established minority population of Indian origin, some of whom had been introduced into East Africa by Britain which, as colonial power, had employed them on construction projects. Many had left India before its independence and before the creation of Pakistan, and their only citizenship was that of the UK and Colonies.

The potential numbers of those eligible to travel to the UK created alarm, and the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1968 was rushed through Parliament. The new Act provided that British subjects would be free from immigration control only if they, or at least one of their parents or grandparents, had been born, adopted, registered or naturalised in the UK. The issue of a passport by a British High Commission thus ceased to be a qualification for entry free of control. For those subject to control, another voucher system was introduced. This one was based on tight quotas. The 1968 Act directly, and deliberately, favoured white commonwealth citizens more likely to have British ancestry. Cabinet papers released in 2002 showed that the thrust of the legislation was designed to have this effect.^[23]

By the end of the 1960s the previous practice of detaining immigration offenders in prison was increasingly unworkable as numbers of detainees rose. A dedicated facility was opened near Heathrow in a disused RAF base which became the Harmondsworth Immigration Removal Centre.^[24] At Gatwick Airport temporary detention accommodation was located in the disused 1930s air terminal and housed around 15 detainees.

By the end of the 1960s immigration legislation and rules were drawn from too many sources. Consensus was reached that a completely new Immigration Act was needed to tighten controls, clarify the rules and unify the law for foreign and commonwealth nationals. This major reappraisal and consolidation of immigration law coincided with an expansion of the Immigration Branch administrative HQ, change of name and a change of location. In 1972 the Immigration and Nationality Department relocated from High Holborn to Croydon where it took up residence at the recently built Lunar House. The Immigration Branch at ports of entry was retitled the Immigration Service.

Lunar House; since 1972 the HQ of UK Immigration.

The Immigration Act 1971 gave right of abode in the UK to those it defined as ‘patrials’. These were:

1. citizens of the UK and Colonies who had that citizenship (i) by birth, adoption, naturalization, or registration in the UK;
2. citizens of the UK and Colonies whose parent or grandparent had that citizenship by those same means at the time of the birth of the person in question;
3. citizens of the UK and Colonies with five years’ ordinary residence in the UK;
4. Commonwealth citizens whose parent or grandparent was born or adopted in the UK before their birth;
5. Commonwealth citizens married to a patrial man.

The Act replaced employment vouchers with Work permits, allowing only temporary residence. Commonwealth citizens who had been settled in the UK for five years when the Act came into force, (1 January 1973), also had the right to register and thus possibly the right of abode. Others would be subject to immigration controls. Apart from the five-year residence qualification, the right to live in the UK and to enter free from immigration control was determined by birth or parentage, not by nationality.

On the same day that the new Act came into force, 1 January 1973, the UK entered the European Economic Community (EEC). At the same time that immigration restrictions were confirmed for Commonwealth citizens (Africa, Asia, Caribbean, America's and Pacific) with a traditional allegiance to Britain, a new category of privilege was created for the European nationals who had formed the bulk of the work of the Immigrations Service for the preceding 50 years. This represented a dramatic change in Freedom of Movement from one that was previously ethnically diverse that included nations from Africa, Asia, America's, Caribbean and Pacific to white only European nations. Membership of the European Community, now the European Union, encompassed the freedom of movement of workers within member states. The practical reality of membership from an immigration control standpoint was that EU nationals were separated from other arriving passengers. As, in theory at least, they could be excluded or deported, (for instance following criminal conviction), there still continued checks against warnings lists. In 1970 the staff numbers within the Immigration Service had risen to approximately 1100 - rather more than double the administration workers at its London HQ.^[25]

Despite the legislation of 1968 and 1971, the numbers of Commonwealth citizens coming to settle still caused political anxiety that was often racially based - especially where projections of future trends were based on a list of vague assumptions. The lack of reliable statistics and access to data was to be a recurring theme throughout the 1980s and beyond. The old "Traffic Index" of manually collated landing and embarkation cards was replaced by a new computer system, (INDECS), in 1979 but the primitive database was a limited success and the use of paper cards continued. Immigration Officers working in 24-hour ports-of-entry only had access to the main immigration database via telephone during office hours Monday to Friday.^[26]

1979–1989: Expansion, new visa controls, and carriers liability

The incoming Conservative administration in 1979 acted to introduce more legislation - the British Nationality Act 1981- which again tightened citizenship criteria. From an immigration control standpoint there was growing concern, and heated debate, concerning the restrictions placed on foreign spouses joining UK partners. There was evidence that marriage was being used by some as a means to circumvent the stricter settlement rules and a particular focus on applications from the Indian sub-continent. In the absence of overseas visa controls there was an incentive for prospective spouses to attempt to gain entry as visitors and apply for stay on the basis of marriage once in the UK once the marriage had taken place. The attempts by the Immigration Service at ports to investigate suspected bogus marriages impacted on cultural and racial sensitivities where the differences between marriages arranged legitimately according to custom and those arranged for immigration purposes were notoriously difficult to separate. To investigate the complexities of the applications within a port of entry control environment was far from ideal and the Service was criticised for insensitivity in its dealings with these cases, especially in the misuse of medical examinations. In 1983 new immigration rules regarding marriage were introduced which required people to satisfy IND and UKIS that the "primary purpose" of the marriage was not for immigration purposes.

The thrust of IND's policy throughout the 1980s was to continue to reassure public and political opinion that the numbers of those settling in the UK was under control and to try and take the heat out the immigration issue. The emphasis on settlement statistics remained the most important statistical indicator until the steep rise in asylum numbers in the early 1990s.

The pressures on the inbound controls presented by the growth in numbers and rates of refusal for some nationalities meant that, by 1986, there was increasing pressure for new visa requirements. On 1 September 1986, new visa restrictions were announced for India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria and Ghana as the UK leading to further racial exclusion from Africa and Asia in favour of white EU nations. For reasons which are unclear the visa restrictions did not come into force until 15 October (23 October for Ghana). The ensuing panic over the weeks in between the announcement and implementation of the new rules brought Heathrow Airport to a standstill and the evening television news bulletins contained footage of hundreds of detainees camped in the main arrivals hall at Terminal 3 awaiting processing.^[27]

Growing pressures on immigration detention accommodation resulted in an attempt to provide additional capacity by means of a floating detention centre. The Earl William was an ex cross-channel ferry refitted for a new role as a static, secure holding facility moored at Harwich. Its use provoked hostile opposition but the Home Office pressed forward with the idea and the Earl William was contracted into service under the management of Securicor, who had been running immigration detention facilities since 1970. Acceptance of the new arrangements required that the Earl William prove itself as cost effective, humane and secure. In October 1987 the strongest gale to hit England in 200 years broke the vessel free of its moorings and it ran aground on a sandbank.^[28] Although none of its 78 detainees was injured, the credibility of the exercise was fatally undermined and it was not used again.

The 1987 Carriers Liability Act sought to place greater responsibility on those bringing passengers to the UK to verify that their documentation was in order. The Act gave powers to fine the carrier £1000 for each inadmissible passenger. This fine was doubled in August 1991 and two years later extended to cover passengers without transit visas where these were required. This applied as much to lorry drivers and owners of small aircraft as it did to international airlines and was fiercely resisted by the transport lobby. The numbers of clandestine illegal entrants continued to increase despite the sanctions imposed. In 1998 8000 illegal entrants were detected arriving clandestinely where, in 1992, there had been 500.^[29] The Act insisted that carriers, including hauliers, should take responsibility for those they brought to the UK but allowed that carriers could not be expected to be experts in forged or counterfeit documents. The fine was applied however where, in the opinion of the Immigration Service, the forgery was "readily apparent". Carriers were also fined for the more demonstrable errors of transporting people without identity documents or without a visa where they were required to have one. The 1987 Act was later repealed and replaced by provisions within the 1999 Act. Between its implementation and 1991 approximately £30m in fines were imposed.^[30] The numbers of "designated" ports, i.e.: those licensed to allow international passengers rose in 1987 to include Leeds/Bradford Airport, Newcastle and Edinburgh^[31] and a new terminal opened at Gatwick in 1988.

The fall of the Berlin Wall brought with it a new political landscape, opened up travel routes long closed and meant the re-emergence of nationalities which had been submerged within the Soviet bloc. The relaxation of travel restrictions raised concerns at the potential movement of labour from other countries in Eastern Europe and visa controls were applied in 1992.^[32]

1990–1997: The growth in asylum

The number of asylum seekers before 1979 is difficult to determine as no separate statistics were collated before this point. A Parliamentary answer indicated that in 1973, 34 people had been granted refugee status.^[33] The application of the 1951 Convention dealing with the treatment of refugees was still being applied, to a large extent, to those people fleeing persecution from behind the Iron Curtain.

UK asylum applications 1979–2009. Numbers of new applications for asylum, (not including dependents) peaked in 2002 at 84,130 - source; Home Office, Control of Immigration and Asylum statistics, HMSO

The total number of asylum applications in 1979 was 1563^[34] and by 1988 had risen, fairly steadily but not too dramatically, to 3998.^[35] In 1989 the numbers of applications rose sharply, to 11640, and by 1991 had reached 44840. The reasons for the dramatic rise are complex and have to be seen in the context of international travel patterns to other European nations.^[36]

Only a very small proportion, 5% in 1994, of applicants were granted full refugee status.^[37] Of the others a larger number were granted Exceptional Leave, (later re-titled Discretionary Leave), usually on the basis that other compassionate circumstances applied such as family ties.

The rates of refusal highlighted a growth in applicants whose motive was found to be economic migration rather than genuine fear of return. The reasons for the rapid increase in arrivals included increasing availability of cheaper air travel, the existence by then of community groups able to provide support on arrival, relative economic prosperity that made employment possible, the availability of Legal aid to pursue the claim and eligibility to certain benefits and accommodation.^[38] For those who might otherwise have intended to enter and work illegally the benefit of an outstanding asylum claim was the legitimacy it conferred and safety as regards arrest.

The administrative processes governing asylum applications were overwhelmed and a backlog started to accumulate.^[39] The increased delays meant more applicants eventually found themselves eligible for concessions based on the length of time the process had taken and this, in turn, encouraged speculative applications from those who saw no future in pursuing the difficult alternatives offered of seeking permission to remain through legitimate settlement or approved employment. As numbers rose, a decreasing proportion were found to qualify for refugee status. In 1980, in the United Kingdom, 64 per cent. of claimants were recognised as refugees. In 1990, the figure was about 25 per cent.^[40]

Between 1995 and 2000 the newest problem the Immigration Service faced was the growth in asylum seekers entering via the Channel Tunnel with 700 a month presenting themselves at Waterloo station. Waterloo, as an international terminal, was later replaced by the control at St Pancras station and the creation of "juxtaposed controls" agreed by the Sangatte Protocol of 1992 which was itself brought into being by the Channel Tunnel (International Arrangements) Order 1993. This allowed for control zones to be set up at each end of the tunnel; the British end at St Pancras operated by French officers and the French control zone at Coquelles staffed by UK Immigration Officers. A passenger at Coquelles was still legally in France; the international frontier was at the midpoint of the tunnel. In immigration terms a person did not enter the UK until they left the terminal at Cheriton. This brought about some complex scenarios; it was not possible to claim asylum in the UK at Coquelles but it was possible to enter the control area illegally and be treated as an illegal entrant.^[41]

Most asylum applicants detected at ports of entry had no identifying documentation but it was not legally or physically possible to detain all those who arrived. A new team to counter the growing trend of facilitation of asylum and illegal entry at seaports, both clandestine and documentary abuse, was created at Dover in 1994. The Facilitation Support Unit (FSU) was jointly staffed by the Immigration Service and Kent Police. The unit developed expertise in bringing prosecutions against those people smuggling illegal entrants. A report to the Home Affairs Select Committee in 2001 said,

"In 1999, the FSU investigated 299 incidents and arrested 410 persons suspected of facilitating a total of 1,803 illegal entrants/asylum claimants. In the same period, 105 trials were completed involving 120 defendants and resulting in 106 convictions. Custodial sentences exceeding 172 years were imposed".^[42]

The efforts made to identify and document the arriving asylum seekers were vital to the end of the process where an application was refused. Without proof of identity, nationality and inbound carrier it was very much more difficult to document and remove the person. Fingerprinting of asylum seekers was a key part of this process, and was being considered by 1991.^[43] Legal powers to fingerprint asylum seekers were finally given within the 1993 Asylum and Immigration Act^[44] Opponents expressed the view that this criminalised asylum seekers.^[45]

In 1983 the total Immigration detention space available to the Immigration Service was approximately 180 spaces located at the major London airports.^[46] Elsewhere, other ports made use of local prison spaces. The existing facilities were designed to cater for short stay cases of people soon to be removed from the country having been refused at a port of entry.

By 1987 it was recognised that the available space was inadequate and an attempt was made to address this by use of a floating detention vessel, (see above). The failure of the Earl William meant that the numbers of those who had to be released on temporary admission, (immigration bail), grew. The opening of Campsfield House Detention Centre in 1993^[47] provided 200 extra spaces. The expansion led to a more centralised management of the detention estate whereas before the centres had largely been managed by the airports that they served. On 25 May 1995 the total number of people held in immigration detention centres was recorded as 381 with a further 508 being held in prisons under immigration powers.^[48]

The pressure on the detention estate continued to grow during the 1990s. As detention usage grew so did the costs - £7.76m in 1993/4 rising to £17.8m by 1996/97.^[49][50] Tinsley House, which opened in 1996 at Gatwick, was the first purpose-built immigration detention centre.

1997–2001: Expansion and modernisation

2002–2005: Asylum starts to wane and Tipping the Balance

Controlling Our Borders: the 2005 five-year plan

The high level thinking around security and intelligence meant that, even without the July 7th terrorist bombings that year, there was a new appetite for greater cooperation and better use of data.

The 2005 white paper “Controlling Our Borders - Making Migration Work for Britain” outlined the new “e-Borders” programme;

“a joined up modernised intelligence-led border control and security framework” to “allow Immigration Service and other agencies including Police, Customs and Excise, Security Services to work more closely together”.

It went on to explain how this would be achieved;

“The e-Borders systems will collect both arrivals and departure information … Carriers will provide advance passenger information (API) and passenger name records (PNR) electronically. Passenger details (including names, dates of birth, nationality and travel document details) will be checked against multi-agency watchlists prior to boarding a flight….we will have a much clearer picture of passengers’ movements in and out of the country. This wealth of information will help border control, law enforcement and intelligence agencies, and other Government departments to target their activity”.^[88][89]

This was a hugely ambitious project to join up various agencies and use both public and private data, both inside and outside the UK, in ways that had never been attempted before. It had already started in 2004 as Project Semaphore which was to test the principles in a limited way and act as a proof of concept for the full implementation of e-Borders. Semaphore went beyond the theoretical though – it would actually start producing data on routes of interest.^[90]

“Controlling our Borders” also outlined two other planks that were to underpin future strategy. The Points Based System for issuing visas would not become reality until 2007 but was already in planning. More immediate was the “New Asylum Model”, (NAM), for dealing with asylum applications. This was a combination of existing fast track processes, which would be extended, and another attempt at single owner caseworking whose aim was to ensure continuity through the entire decision-making process. Caseworkers would be expected to perform a far wider range of duties including the presentation of case at appeal hearings and the casework surrounding a person's removal. The new casework teams would be the machine that would track and manage failed asylum seekers towards removal as a “ready to go product” in much the manner championed by the Home Affairs Committee.^[91]

2007–2008: Border and Immigration Agency to UK Border Agency

The events of 2006 involving the foreign prisoners crisis prompted a "re-branding" exercise combined with the move to turn IND into an executive agency. Since 1999 a great deal of legislative time, resources and development capital had been allocated to immigration issues. The mistakes that led to the resignation of Beverley Hughes and Charles Clarke led to consideration of whether more fundamental change was required.

The Border and Immigration Agency was created on 1 April 2007. This was not the unified border force that had been recommended by the Home Affairs Committee in 2001. The creation of the new agency took place in the wake of the, still toxic, Foreign National Prisoners scandal. The publicly stated benefits were that the agency would be more accountable. The key organisational change was that of regionalisation. The new agency would be divided into six new regions each under the command of a Director. Border staff would not be regionalised owing the fact that their workforce was inextricably tethered to ports in London and the South East. The Immigration Service Ports Directorate would, for the first time, be uniformed. The case for regionalisation was set out on the basis that local teams would form closer links with other regional government offices and with local communities. The Unions suspected another motive of creating an environment where national pay scales would be ended in favour of local rates. The practical argument for regionalisation appeared to undermined by the fact that most migrants lived in the South East.

The fate of Immigration Service enforcement staff was less clear cut. They already had a regional structure but the directorate was again disbanded and reorganised along a new regional structure. The central management structures for enforcement were disbanded and their functions dispersed. As the new agency was created so the Immigration Service ceased to exist but their functions continued under a new umbrella organisation called the Border and Immigration Agency. On 1 July the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, announced that he was going to:“reform the UK's border arrangements, integrating the work of Customs, the Border and Immigration Agency and UKvisas, overseas and at the main points of entry to the UK, and establishing a unified border force”.

The Cabinet Office quickly published a “review” document “Security in a Global Hub - Establishing the UK's new border arrangements”.

2010–present: Home Office hostile environment policy