The government doesn't know how many people are overstaying their visas - here's why

The government doesn't know how many people are overstaying their visas - here's why

The Home Office's old method of tracking visa overstayers wasn't perfect, but now there's no such system in place at all.

The Government Doesn't Know How Many People Are Overstaying Their Visas - Here's Why

Sky News has spoken to immigration lawyers about the numbers, and one believes there could be as many as 400,000 living across the country. Why doesn’t the government know? The Home Office used to gather data on visa overstayers by effectively checking a list of passport numbers associated with visas against a list of passport numbers of people leaving the UK, taken from airlines and other international travel providers. If there was a passport …