UK eVisa system problems persist despite repeated warnings

Previous warnings

Despite the problems now being faced, the Home Office has been repeatedly warned by civil society and migrant support groups about problems with the eVisa system.

While these groups have directly proposed alternatives to the Home Office (such as the use of QR code or “stable token” systems), the department’s eVisa policy team insisted as far back as December 2023 that it will not “compromise on the real-time aspect” of the e-Visa checks, as “any check of an individual’s immigration status must be done in real time to reflect the current immigration status held” on its systems.

“As we warned, people are having problems using e-Visas to travel back to the UK,” said the Open Right Group. “We asked the Home Office to make the simple change of allowing people to have a QR code. This could be saved or printed without having to rely on a flawed online-only system.

“Many refugees are still waiting for their e-Visas,” it said. “Without them, they cannot work, set up a bank account, rent somewhere to live or claim benefits. The Home Office needs to sort out this mess urgently.”

The Home Office has previously stated in the eVisa terms and conditions that it will take no liability for any problems or disruptions, and direct or indirect losses when using a UKVI account – including for “any information that is lost or corrupted while data is being transmitted, processed or downloaded from the UKVI account” – which ORG said implies the department “is already aware of the many technical issues with the eVisa scheme and is pre-emptively protecting itself against legitimate legal claims”.

ORG and others have said the use of eVisas should be seen in the context of the UK’s “hostile environment” approach, which is intended to make life in the UK as difficult as possible for people choosing to live there.

Home Office response

Computer Weekly contacted the Home Office about every claim made in the story. A spokesperson said: “eVisas bring significant benefits. They cannot be lost, stolen or tampered with, unlike a physical document, and also increase the UK immigration system’s security and efficiency. 

“We are continuously listening to concerns people have, and are working closely with airlines and international stakeholders to ensure the roll-out of eVisas is smooth.”

The Home Office also referred Computer Weekly to a written statement made by migration and citizenship minister Seema Malhotra in December 2024, in which she recognised “areas of concern” with the eVisa system, noting: “We have decided to allow carriers to accept a BRP or EUSS BRC expiring on or after 31 December 2024 as valid evidence of permission to travel until at least 31 March.”

“We recognise a small number of customers have experienced issues with their eVisas, which we are working hard to address,” she added, and encouraged those experiencing issues to contact the Home Office.

“Where necessary, the Resolution Centre can enable individuals’ status to be verified through alternative means,” said Malhotra. “Customers can contact the Resolution Centre using an online webchat service or by phone.”

She also highlighted Assisted Digital, “a free service provided by UKVI to support digitally excluded customers in creating their accounts” that provides support either over the phone or in face-to-face meetings for people who require assistance with IT-related aspects of the eVisa system.

Repeated warnings

In September 2024, ORG described the online-only, real-time nature of the eVisa system – which trawls dozens of disparate government databases to generate a new immigration status each time someone logs in – as 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,” it said, adding that research has identified over 90 different platforms and casework systems that immigration data may be pulled from in 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 said. “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.”

ORG said users face multiple problems as a result of these design choices, 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 or “entangled” in instances where they, for example, share the same name or date of birth.

The Home Office has also been made aware of these issues by The3million, a grassroots organisation supporting EU citizens in the UK, which has extensively engaged with the department over eVisa issues since October 2021.

According to the research highlighted by ORG – published in September 2024 by Monique Hawkins of The3million and Kuba Jablonowski, an algorithmic governance researcher at the University of Bristol – “the operational logic of online-only status is built around immigration application decisions, rather than applicants, and it uses an unstable identifier as the key to match and compute online status. Both these design decisions result in systemic error.”

Design issues

The authors also note that despite “extensive” engagement from civil society groups, the Home Office is refusing to engage on the “substantive design issues” identified with its eVisa system; highlighting the eVisa policy teams’ response to The3million from December 2023.

“The Home Office responses show the department is determined to maintain this system where status is being constantly rechecked, so any change in legal status is reflected in the proof of status,” wrote Hawkins and Jablonowski. “However, the side effect is that at least tens of thousands of status holders are unable to evidence their rights.

“Crucially, no status holder can be certain they will be able to evidence rights at the point of check. Documented status provides a degree of certainty before status check, whereas computational status is only resolved in the moment of status check.”

Speaking with Computer Weekly, Hawkins said that “while these entanglements and problems affect people randomly, across the board”, the issue still disproportionately affects certain people more than others.

“As ever, more vulnerable people have far less agency [to fix the issue] and the impacts are much greater on them because, for example, they’re much more likely to be working in the gig economy, whereas people at the other end of the scale, if their status doesn’t work, an HR department and a lawyer can get involved, who can then contact the Home Office on their behalf … so the impacts are very disproportionate.”

Jablonowski added that it’s unclear to them why the Home Office made the decision not to use a “stable unique identifier, like an NHS number equivalent for immigration services”, adding that while most people with immigration statuses are not affected, “we don’t know what the proportion of glitching to non-glitching statuses is. We wouldn’t claim it doesn’t work for most people, and there is an element of that calculation in the Home Office. It’s possible the error rate is too marginal.”

An intensification of the hostile environment

According to other migrant support groups, the shift to eVisas and the foreseeable consequences represent a digital extension of the existing hostile environment.

According to a member of the Migrants’ Rights Network (MRN) community, the eVisa process has created huge mental and bureaucratic burdens for those affected.

“This process is placing blame and fear on to people out of sheer incompetence of the Home Office,” they said. “We all have valid visas, and have already filed for these visas through extensive paperwork. Then, when the Home Office decided to digitalise their system, the responsibility was shifted onto individual people to do the work of the institution.

“Instead of paying staff to transfer and log the data, the Home Office is forcing free labour and causing emotional distress for people without secured immigration status, all the while knowing people will, and must, do it or else risk legal consequences. This system does not benefit the people facing the greatest impact. It only terrifies.”

Speaking with Computer Weekly, Julia Tinsley-Kent, head of policy and communications at the MRN, said the move to real-time checking of people’s status is further “intensifying the hostile environment”, especially as a lot of the people her organisation works with do not have readily available internet access.

“You speak to people who have to make decisions between buying food and buying a data package, so for them its actually a real stress … it’s just not realistic for some people,” she said.

“What’s really interesting is that, despite all this push that the government is putting on digital status, ‘because it’s going to be so easy’, it says – ‘oh, but you should keep your expired physical BRP [Biometric Residence Permit] anyway’, as it’s meant to help with future applications to stay in the UK.”

Tinsley-Kent added that people already lack trust in the Home Office’s ability to effectively and safely handle their data, pointing to flaws in its Atlas database that resulted in more than 76,000 people being listed with incorrect names, photographs or immigration statuses.

Migration minister Malhotra said in her December 2024 statement: “If someone encounters an issue with their eVisa, we can search those records to find their information and confirm their status. BRP holders are also able to retain their expired BRPs for their own records, and legacy document holders who make the switch to an eVisa will also still have their physical documents as evidence of their immigration status.”

Migrants rights organiser Son Olszewski further told Computer Weekly: “The eVisa system will inevitably result in thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people being denied access to fundamental rights. It will be particularly cruel to people who are digitally excluded – for example, people who cannot afford a smartphone or people like my grandma, who struggles to even send me a text.

“The eVisa system’s only function is to increase state surveillance and reinforce forms of internal border violence. People shouldn’t need to prove their status – digitally or otherwise – to access fundamental rights to housing or healthcare.”

This sentiment was shared by Tinsley-Kent, who noted that regardless of whether a status is digital, it still relies on the underlying assumption that the state can and should be able to interrogate where people choose to live or work.

“The reason the state is doing this is to reinforce border violence on a day-to-day basis, to put everyone it can into this system, this form of surveillance,” she said.

“It’s part of a much wider movement that’s happening around state surveillance of migrant and racialised people. When I speak to people who are disproportionately impacted by borders – sex workers, for example – and talk to them about the border becoming more digital, they say they’re concerned about the impact increased surveillance could have on them and how it may hinder their ability to move across borders for work.”