UK immigration prepares to speed up the roll-out of ID cards
November 03 2009 by Liam Clifford
The UK Border Agency brings forward mass ID card introduction.
Some
100,000 UK ID cards for foreign nationals have now been issued to immigrants by the
UK Border Agency, which says the roll-out process is about to speed
up.
Regulations are being laid out this week to parliament, which will
extend the ID card scheme to people moving to the UK from outside the European
Economic Area who are extending their leave to remain living in the UK for more
than 6 months under Tier 2 of the UK points based system.
This extension
of the roll-out of the ID cards has been brought forward from spring 2010 to 6
January 2010 on request from the Home Secretary.
The UK Border Agency has
also recommended the bringing forward of the roll-out of ID cards for UK visa
applicants under Tiers 1-5 of the points based system, from spring 2011 to the
end of 2010.
UK immigration officials had an initial target to issue
75,000 ID cards to foreign nationals by November 2009, which they have exceeded
by some margin.
Additional facilities for recording biometric
information, which is stored on each card, have been introduced to help deal
with the increased number of people registering their information with the UK
Border Agency.
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