PLUMMET IN NUMBER OF GOLDEN VISAS GRANTED AFTER ‘BLIND FAITH’ PERIOD ENDS
Today, the Home Office published its immigration figures for the last quarter of 2015 and they make for interesting reading. If you look at the number of applications granted for Tier 1 (Investor) visas – the cash-for-residency programme that’s been running since 2008 – you’ll notice they’ve fallen off a cliff. In 2014, the UK Government admitted 1,172 people through the scheme; in 2015, it only admitted 192. That’s quite a drop.
As we highlighted in our Gold Rush report, these ‘Golden Visas’ represented an easy way for the corrupt to enter the UK under a veil of secrecy. Until 2015, there were very little checks to ensure applicants hadn’t obtained their money from corrupt sources, leaving an open door to those with dubious pasts wishing to start a new life in the UK.
In some ways today’s stats are good news – the UK has finally started to close the door on the corrupt. However, it also raises some serious questions about what the government is going to do about all the people it gave visas to and probably shouldn’t have, some of which may now have permanent residency...
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