“These delays mean that businesses cannot operate, putting families at risk during an already damaging cost-of-living crisis,” she said.
In a response to Clark in April seen by openDemocracy, immigration minister Kevin Foster blamed an “unprecedented” number of applications, saying that over 80% were being processed within six months. Foster said that delays had been compounded by accounting irregularities among about 700 visa holders who were accused of claiming more from the government’s COVID-19 Bounce Back Loan scheme for self-employed people and small business owners than they were eligible for.
But lawyers who spoke to openDemocracy said it was unlikely that so many applications could have been delayed for this reason.
Semira Dilgil, an immigration lawyer who represents ECAA visa holders, said: “Things piled up because they were hiding behind the COVID excuse. In fact, they don’t have enough staff to handle visas.”
Ozan Askin from Silvine Law agreed. “I think the delays have nothing to do with the loans,” he said. “It is very difficult to [estimate] the number of mistaken applications… but I don’t think 700 applications all mistakenly got the loans.”
Do less, but better
Nida Dincturk, 31, a UK-based journalist and ECAA holder, is among those who claimed the Bounce Back Loan. But she told openDemocracy: “I pay back my loan regularly yet have been waiting for a visa for 14 months. I wrote a two-page cover letter six months ago to explain everything and still haven't responded. If the Home Office is sceptical about loans, why aren’t they inviting us to an interview to explain ourselves?”
Colin Yeo, an immigration barrister and author, said an overly complex immigration system was adding to the problem. “Ministers need to stop making unnecessary and distracting work for officials and focus on doing less but better,” he said.
Zoe Gardner, policy and advocacy manager at the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, agreed. “Instead of spending money on helping ordinary people here,” she said, “they are spending millions of pounds to send people to Rwanda.”
On 23 June, Turkey’s foreign minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu raised the issue at a meeting in Ankara with UK foreign secretary Liz Truss. A spokesperson for the Turkish embassy in London told openDemocracy it would “continue to closely monitor the issue … until this extraordinary backlog in our citizens’ visa extension process ends”.
A Home Office spokesperson told openDemocracy: “Where applications to this visa route are straightforward and non-complex, the majority are concluded within our published six-month service standard. If applications are more complex they may take longer to consider – we have notified customers of this and we aim to conclude each application as quickly as possible.”