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Use of fingerprints to be tested on Sri Lankans

By Arun Kundnani

10 July 2003, 4:00pm

Sri Lankans who apply for a visa to come to the UK are to be fingerprinted in a six-month pilot scheme. If successful, similar measures will be deployed for other countries.

The scheme is due to begin on 14 July, after which all applicants for a visa at the British High Commission in Colombo will have the print of their index finger electronically scanned. Information will be stored on a database which a number of UK state agencies, including the police, will have access to. Over the next month, fingerprint scanners will be installed at points of entry to the UK.

Home Office minister Beverley Hughes claimed that the initiative was 'not about creating a "fortresss Europe". It is about bearing down on those who would abuse our immigration and asylum system'. She said that Sri Lanka had been singled out for the pilot because of the large number of Sri Lankans leaving the country without documents. But Mayan Vije, Sri Lanka Project Co-ordinator at the British Refugee Council, said: 'It is wrong to assume that asylum seekers who lack official documents are in some way acting in a fraudulent manner. Many asylum seekers who destroy their documents do so through fear and others will have had their documents removed from them.'

Many Sri Lankans are already angry with the service offered at the British High Commission in Colombo, where, it is claimed, visa applicants have to queue for long periods of time and are treated rudely by staff. The cost of applying for a standard visa is around £37 - about half of the monthly income for an average Sri Lankan family. The money is not refunded if the application is unsuccessful. A recent investigation by immigrant rights groups found that the number of Asians being refused visas to visit the UK has increased greatly since 11 September 2001.

Biometrics

The Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002 introduced greater powers for using 'biometric data', such as fingerprints and iris scans, under Section 126. The powers came into effect on 12 June 2003.

EU countries and the USA are working towards a wider use of physical data like fingerprints or iris recognition in all parts of the immigration process. Iris scanners are being installed at ten UK airports over the next year.

Under pressure from the US government, EU states agreed, at the end of June, to begin adding biometric data to national passports from next year. The United States had threatened to introduce mandatory visas for all EU citizens if the EU did not include such identifiers in its passports. An agreement was also made, earlier this year, by the G8 nations (Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States) to develop a biometric passport system, with barcodes, iris scans and fingerprints.

White list

The introduction of the fingerprinting pilot in Sri Lanka follows the addition, from mid-March, of Sri Lanka to a 'white list' of countries from which asylum applications are deemed 'clearly unfounded'. Asylum claims from these countries are automatically rejected with only a limited right of appeal.

In the first quarter of 2003, before Sri Lanka was added to the list, 580 asylum claims were submitted for an initial decision. Of these, 515 were rejected. Even if one accepts that the initial decision-making process is accurate, that still leaves 65 Sri Lankans with valid asylum claims in January, February and March of this year. But, in fact, the initial decision-making process regularly makes mistakes, rejecting Sri Lankan asylum seekers who should be accepted. This is shown by how many successfully go on to appeal their initial rejection - 170 managed to do this in the same quarter. According to the Refugee Council, the 'white list' process and the curtailment of appeal rights will lead to many more wrongful rejections.

The number of asylum claims which have eventually been successful on appeal, and the evidence from recognised authorities on the country, suggest that Sri Lanka is not a place where 'persecution and human rights breaches are rare' - the description used when the 'white list' was announced. The Sri Lanka Project of the Refugee Council believes that 'although considerable progress has been made, the [peace] process has stalled prior to concrete agreements on the protection of human rights and many of the substantive issues underlying the conflict are yet to be discussed'. The Refugee Council says that, after twenty years of civil war, it is premature to pronounce Sri Lanka a safe country.

Corruption

In March this year, it emerged that a British national working at the High Commission in Colombo had been accepting bribes for visas and demanding sexual favours from Sri Lankans desperate for permission to leave the country. He had been charging half a million rupees (around £3,000) to individuals who could not obtain visas through the normal process. The official, who had worked at the Commission for ten years, was dismissed and an internal inquiry was conducted but, so far, it appears that no criminal proceedings have been initiated.

In May, US authorities brought charges against former State Department employees over the alleged sale of US entry visas from the American embassy in Colombo.

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