UK immigration rant: Biometric Residence Permits

Those of you who are not immigrants may be unaware that many incomers on long term visas to the UK have, for the last fourteen years, been required to have a Biometric Residence Card throughout their stay in the UK. The BRP is basically an ID card that was supposed to evidence your right to live and work in the UK.

However, the BRP has been totally useless this whole bloody time. You can’t use it with the Home Office to prove anything- they still look you up on the system for everything. You still need to show your passport upon entry to the country and you can’t use the BRP in automatic gates (if your existing passport isn’t accepted anyway). Employers still needed to go online to check work rights. And no-one else knows what the F it is. And each time your visa status changed you needed a new card, anf to pay for it, and to get new fingerprints taken.

AND NOW THEY ARE ABOLISHING THE SODDING CARD and moving everyone across to a new online system that isn’t the same as Government Gateway – despite most people who have BRPs also being taxpayers etc. absolutely useless outsourced privatised ****. This is on top of Sopra Steria running a scam where you basically have to pay an extra fee to find availability for appointments that are supposed to be free, and the applications themselves costing hundreds or thousands of pounds a pop.

I know it’s not the worst part of the immigration system but ffs

BRP cards: what are they good for?

I quite agree that our country seems to always go for the complex, over-priced, lack of common sense solution.

I bet someone went to a Consultant and said ‘how do we do this?’ and go the ‘yes’ reply which earned said consultant a fortune…

I bet someone went to a Consultant and said ‘how do we do this?’ and go the ‘yes’ reply which earned said consultant a fortune…

No, will be a deliberate policy to make the lives of imigrants as awful as possible as part of the government’s “hostile environment” strategy.

Nothing says it can’t be both. 😕

The people working in immigration (and DWP) are just following orders.

The people working in immigration (and DWP) are just following orders.

Worth remembering this. It’s not the front line civil servants who come up with all this bollocks

I agree with sentiment regarding the hostile environment and punitively expensive bureacracy but fail to see why you’re against it all going online.

As overseas resident I was working with frustratingly long response times, for example a “44  weeks to a year” response time on a document needing dealing with in less than a year to respect a deadline. Since it’s gone on line the response time has gone down to “5 weeks”. Fingers crossed.

Before going online the way of proving who I am was finding a consulate, since it’s gone online I can scan the chip in my French passport. Progress.

The government might be unfit but the civil servants are slowly improving services IME. If any of the civil servants who take calls are reading this: thank you.

I  purchased one of these a couple of years ago when I worked for a while, last time I’d had a job they just checked the visa in your old passport which was also fine for getting in and out the country, but BRP’s didn’t ever seem any hassle- passport is egate friendly, and I just generated an employer check code online- no hassle whatsoever.

I know they’re being abolished, but why the rant about the forthcoming replacement (presumably you’ve you seen it)? What’s so difficult about it?

The people working in immigration (and DWP) are just following orders.

Worth remembering this. It’s not the front line civil servants who come up with all this bollocks

Ah the Nuerenburg defence!  If you’ve followed much of the Post Office Inquiry cross examinations – that seems to be a part of the story their too.  Nobody seems to define who provided those order or anything more than it being “Post office” or “culture” but a lot of people played their part in not questioning/challenging/thinking/whistleblowing on stuff.  Controversial – but in the current levels of employment in the UK nobody really needs to work for Immigration or DWP if their actions disgust them, its not like the civil service even pays front line civil servants that well.

What’s so difficult about it?

It’s yet another system BUT it’s not integrated into Government Gateway and it’ll be run by the same useless **** and it could have been done 20 years ago…

Controversial – but in the current levels of employment in the UK nobody really needs to work for Immigration or DWP if their actions disgust them, its not like the civil service even pays front line civil servants that well.

There will always be someone who’s willing to do it. Those who are unwilling to be part of it and are good enough to find work elsewhere, will do so. People who don’t have either or both of those qualities, will stay, or come to replace those who left. Consultants will be hired, the money will be good and when money is at stake (whether it’s need ot want), people can make some great mental gymnastics to justify their actions.

Controversial – but in the current levels of employment in the UK nobody really needs to work for Immigration or DWP if their actions disgust them, its not like the civil service even pays front line civil servants that well.

Key word being “if” and guessing those that do work for those organisations either support them or are not really bothered about it.

While I can see it is a shambles/not ideal I can’t say the topic raised here is high on my list of things I am bothered about.

20 years ago I didn’t have a smart phone. It’s only since Android 11 that some of this stuff will work.

In terms of getting administrative stuff on line I reckon the UK is a bit slow but no more than four or five years behind say France. If the French trend is followed services gradually get added to the centralised portal.

I only use the tax, NI and pensions part of the UK system and since March this year can do all I need to online. That happened about five years ago here.

I only use the tax, NI and pensions part of the UK system and since March this year can do all I need to online

Lucky you. If you want to, say, buy missing NI years you need to phone DWP and then HMRC. Each one can be hours on hold and in the event of success you send a cheque which is not credited to your account for months. Of course services for immigration are diabolical, but they’re not significantly worse than those for proper respectable citizens.

Fully paid up immigrant here.
if this saves the ballache of spending half a day in Croydon to get fingerprints then bring it on!

timely, I need to renew in a few months.

ultimately though just more privatisation from the ****s in government right now.

It’s not so long ago that the DVLA website was 9-5 only, Monday to Friday…

That’s now online, DrJ. Like you I battled with the old system which involved sending a form in the post and hours on hold, it’s online now. You can make an annual bank transfer BTW, the account details and how to do it are online, no need for a cheque anymore:

https://www.gov.uk/pay-voluntary-class-3-national-insurance/make-an-online-or-telephone-bank-transfer

That’s now online, DrJ

I wish. They’ve been saying it’s “coming soon” for months now, but no “go live” date.

CF83 is now online which is the start of the process. I’ve just helped someone fill it in, they’d already sent in a paper version but were told to redo it on the new online version which would speed things up.

That’s a different thing. The process is described here:

https://www.gov.uk/pay-voluntary-class-3-national-insurance

Yes, I’ve done all that like you no doubt and now I’m helping someone else through it. The information is now online, you fill in CF83 online, they send you a state pension statement with the voluntary contributions you can make and you make the corresponding payments by bank transfer. You then check which years you are paid up for online. It’s still very slow but faster than before. On one of those indefinite hold calls the very helpful person who eventually answered asked me how far I was from retirement, when I gave the date they suggested it would be a very long time before anything other than current year payments appeared in my on-line NI record, they also told me how much I was credited with which would eventually attributed to missing years. Fingers crossed.

The fact NI information is available online has made people aware that they might be able to get a UK state pension whereas they thought they had no chance. You have to have contributed three years in the UK to qualify for making voluntary class 2/3 contributions from abroad. People who had assumed they hadn’t achieved that have sometimes checked online and found that they got 2 years for A-levels so just one year of work is enough to qualify. There’s a small group of us locally sharing info on this and helping each other out.

I’m sure nobody is reading, but in the event that anyone cares, note that CF83 is the form for NI contributions FROM ABROAD.

When I went through that process a few years ago I had to wait on hold for the best part of an hour with DWP in order to make an appointment to have another phone call MONTHS in the future. If that process has speeded up, good news, but it isn’t relevant to the situation of a UK resident.

This is on top of Sopra Steria running a scam where you basically have to pay an extra fee to find availability for appointments that are supposed to be free

…and Sopra Steria are the same bunch of twunts that got hacked by a state actor (probably China), revealed thousands of UK military personnel’s data, didn’t tell the UK government about it for six months, and then won a contract to advise the UK government…on cybersecurity! Good to know that these are the people keeping thousands of immigrants’ data safe (including refugees from China and Russia and Ukraine).

👋 👋 👋

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/may/10/mod-contractor-hacked-china-failed-report-breach-months

Is Chris Grayling involved?

Nigerian catfishers have better compliance procedures ffs.

No, will be a deliberate policy to make the lives of imigrants as awful as possible as part of the government’s “hostile environment” strategy.

I don’t remember a “hostile environment” strategy under Labour. Got a sauce?