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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