In reply to Offwidth:
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> The only mass breach was a sub-set of language schools which arguably never should have been practicing in the first place.
The student route was a massive problem for immigration abuse.
The story, if I remember rightly, went something like this:
In the late 90s/early 2000s the work permits route was the favoured route for liars and cheats, mainly from India. These guys set up a massive pyramid scheme of small "IT firms" who would each employ a few more immigrants, who would set up their own "IT firm". After many years, the Home Office managed to crack down on this, and these guys needed to find a new way to continue their business. Thus sprang up scores of "dodgy colleges" and there were no controls in place to stop this. "Something needed to be done" and the new Points Based System came in, which was intended to have a new IT system, strict rules, in-person verification of employers and institutions bringing over immigrants, and was going to solve our problems. However, the project was too difficult and what actually happened was the IT system never materialised, the strict new policies couldn't be got past the lawyers (because one of the core functions of the UK legal system appears to be to prevent any kind of effective immigration control since the burden of proof falls on the Home Office to show that an application is full of lies: applicants are honest 'til proven liars and it's kind of hard to prove that the document in front of you was obtained fraudulently on other side of the world), the in-person verification never happened and the dodgy colleges continued their business. Under the "strict new rules" endorsement from genuine HE institutions was required for the dodgy colleges to operate. People had friends in certain places, certain deals were struck and certain dodgy colleges managed to continue their business under the "strict new rules", with a little help from certain universities, and it was too embarassing for the Borders Agency to do anything about. Such colleges were by now (2009ish?) pretty big businesses churning out large numbers of students, with a sideline in immigration crime.
At this point, I left my job in the Home Office, utterly demoralised by the pathetic shambles, and I don't know what's happened since. I don't know whether now sham marriages (always fairly popular) are the favoured route, or whether a different breach in the "defences" has been found.
Post edited at 14:45