A Canadian citizen’s personal data was merged with the data of a Russian national in the UK’s eVisa system, British newspaper The Independent reported last week. The Russian woman, upon entering her own eVisa account, found the Canadian’s email address, telephone number, nationality, and passport details along with her own.
She was not the only one whose data was compromised by Home Office mixups. Many stories like this one emerged last week, when 19 migrant rights groups, charities, and researchers, including Asylum Matters and the Open Rights Group, sent a joint letter to the data watchdog, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).
The letter says there is a “systemic risk to privacy, equality and human rights.”
Unexpected Contact: Merged Details, Unauthorized Data Access
The Canadian woman was contacted by a Russian woman she was unfamiliar with; she said she was able to contact her thanks to the data being assigned to her eVisa in December 2024. She also received the Canadian’s confirmation emails.
The Russian woman, living in London, had issues at the border after returning from her visit home for Christmas. Border staff explained the Canadian’s immigration history to her, despite the Russian woman’s explanation of the merged identities.
She was also turned away at her biometric appointment, where she wanted to provide her fingerprints and photo for visa applications, after being told by officials her details were already in the system.
The Canadian woman, living in Wales, was “extremely traumatized,” according to her solicitor who attempted to contact the eVisa team on behalf of her client several times but received replies saying they would reply within 10 working days. Then the Home Office said they would require 20 working days to respond.
However, she had no response by March of this year.
As charities conversed, they amassed information from several people experiencing glitches in the system.
Missing Information and Reluctance from Officials
The system was first introduced seven years ago, only for EU, European Economic Area, and Swiss nationals applying for settlement rights through the post-Brexit EU Settlement Scheme.
It involves a real-time generated certificate that can be accessed by a special share code each immigrant generates as one-time proof.
Since there is no stable record of visa entitlement, and the real-time generation happens through Home Office servers, the digital-only system reduces the risk of fraud and the abuse of lost physical documents, aiming to provide a more secure form of proof.
But in reality, the process became stressful for migrants, who are anxious about losing their visas between the digital system’s cracks.
Back in August, it was already apparent that the system was suffering from major malfunctions that have caused issues in proving immigration statuses. So, immigration lawyer Andrew Tingley submitted a Freedom of Information request to the Home Office to retrieve data on the total number of reports made using its “Report an error with your eVisa” online form. However, he was told “retrieval, extraction and quality assurance” would exceed the cost limit.
MPs were given similar responses when asking for data through Parliament.
To Politico’s similar request, the department cited Section 22, allowing the withholding of information if it is intended to be published in the future.
However, even the statistics that will be provided could prove to be unreliable: automated emails appeared in February, arriving from UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI), when error reports were received that the service was “currently experiencing a very high volume of enquiries” and thus would “not be able to respond within [its] published timeframes.”
Andrew Tingley, a partner at Tingley Dalanay and another co-convenor of the Immigration Law Practitioners Association’s (ILPA) digitalization working group, says UKVI often doesn’t even record that an error report was submitted.
“This calls into question whether the statistics collected are accurate,” he told Politico. “There does not appear to be any institutional acceptance either by civil servants or ministers of the major issues that people are facing.”
Issues Reported Outside Official Channels
The media reported on individual cases, like Maria Juliana Marquez Monsalve, a Brazilian national who was barred from boarding her flights as foreign staff did not comprehend the eVisa.
Another man was left without his refugee status, unable to see family due to the eVisa delays. Several foreign nationals were denied jobs because they couldn’t use the sharecode system.
Victoria Welsh, a co-convenor of the Immigration Law Practitioners Association’s (ILPA) digitalization working group and the head of business immigration at Taylor Rose, told Politico that glitches in their own right are expected of a digital system, but “the [Home Office’s] continued denial that there are problems, the continued statements that in the vast majority of cases, everybody’s fine … frankly, it’s gaslighting.”
“People are losing accommodation. People are being shut out of their bank account. People are being refused entry to the country. They’re being refused boarding on planes,” Welsh added.
