The family who immigrated to the UK with fake papers

0:00Hello, Ed Conway here. Here is what might sound like a slightly random question. What do AirPods, bananas and a pair of shoddily made running trainers from the 1970s have in common? On the surface, not very much. But on my podcast, Stuff Matters, I will uncover the deeper stories behind each of them. You will see how together they tell a fascinating new story about the world we live in. The first full series of Stuff Matters is out now. Just search for it on your podcast app and follow. Coming up on the Sky News Daily, the abuse of legal immigration, how false documents, thousands of pounds and a bit of interview coaching got one family into the UK.

0:42Hello, Ed Conway here. Here is what might sound like a slightly random question. What do AirPods, bananas and a pair of shoddily made running trainers from the 1970s have in common? On the surface, not very much. But on my podcast, Stuff Matters, I will uncover the deeper stories behind each of them. You will see how, together, they tell a fascinating new story about the world we live in. The first full series of Stuff Matters is out now. Just search for it on your podcast app and follow.

1:16Hi, everyone. Neil Patterson back on The Daily. Do hope you're all well. Today, we are returning to the immigration debate. But rather than the small boats and illegal immigration, which have come to dominate that discussion, instead, we're going to be looking at legal, visa-based routes to the UK and the ways in which those can be gamed. In fact, Sky News has seen evidence of interviews being rehearsed, even bank records being falsified, all to get legal access to the UK. The agent put the money in account, which is fake. It's nothing. He's just putting the money. After one minute, he withdraw.

1:54But he create the document like I have that money. So it's fake, fake documents. It's fake, 110 % fake. So that you could apply with those fake documents for a visa. Now, that's Sammy. We'll be hearing more from him throughout the podcast. We've also got Jolie Santa Cruz from the Sky News Data and Forensics Unit to try and give us some of the numbers around legal migration. She will be here very shortly. But first, we have our community's correspondent, Lisa Holland. Lisa, that was you interviewing Sammy. So how did you come across him and his family? So Sammy, actually, just to point out, is not his real name.

2:29We decided not to identify this man and his family. So we agreed that we would call him Sammy. I've been looking into legal migration to the UK and concerns about the abuse of the visa system for a couple of years. And I've spoken to people who've come on student visas before saying they never intended to be students. But with Sammy and the level of detail that he gave to us and the insight that it gave us into the immigration system, we've never really had that kind of story before. So that was really quite extraordinary to hear the journey of Sammy and his family and what happened to them and the situation that they've been in and remain in.

3:09Let's flesh out the detail just a little bit first. I mean, where is Sammy from? And for what purpose was he attempting to get here in the first place? So Sammy is from India. I met him through a contact who put me in touch with him, telling me about the predicament that they were in. And so I went along to speak to Sammy. We sat down in his accommodation, which frankly was pretty grim. And at times during that first conversation, he broke down in tears about the situation that he was in. And he'd settled in his mind that he wanted, with his wife and his two children, to come to the UK. UK is my dream country.

3:47So that's why I'm choosing the UK. A greenery, lots of people moving, London, London. So he said he googled ways to get to the UK. And there are a number of them, aren't there? A number of legal routes. There's a long-standing relationship, of course, between the United Kingdom and the subcontinent. Absolutely. And he googled how to get here. one route skilled worker visas another just as a general visitor visa but also student visa and he settled on a student visa because he felt that that would enable them to stay longer in the UK but at that time when he first started looking which was over three years ago dependents were allowed to come on dependent visas as well so it would be it would be a route which enabled him to come if they applied for a student visa for his wife to get to the UK and they would come as dependents.

4:35His wife would apply for a course, she would get the student visa and he would come as a dependent, as would their two children. But this is where their story gets complicated, because they decided to recruit agents, which effectively are criminal gangs in India, who he paid a large sum of money to, around£20 ,000, to organise the visas. Why? Why would you need to spend that amount of money to take advantage of a legal route to the United Kingdom? Time and again people have said to me people feel that they are not personally equipped to kind of fill out the forms if you like and apply but with Sammy and his family is that they told us that fake documents were used to successfully get the visa which accompanied the place the university place that the agents secured for them.

5:24Now throughout Sammy said that he didn't no, it was not his intention that fake documents would be used. But essentially, as a visa requirement, you need to prove that you've got money in your bank account to sustain yourself financially once you get to the UK. Makes sense. The truth was they didn't. This was a very poor Indian family. They had a dream. They set out to achieve it. They didn't have the money in the bank account. He says that the agents created for them two documents, which were kind of real documents, but the truth was the money inside the bank accounts wasn't real. It was just moved into the bank accounts.

6:04So there was around£25 ,000 in one bank account, around£10 ,000 in another bank account. Those documents were sent off, apparently, to apply for the visa, but the reality was they couldn't sustain themselves financially. Just to be clear, though, you're describing them as a poor Indian family, but a poor Indian family that's just shelled out£20 ,000 on these agents. Well, that was everything they had, And I think that's also at the heart of a lot of these kinds of stories, that again and again we hear people talking about how they sold everything that they had. Sammy described going round to relatives to try to raise money, borrowing from people.

6:39He said he sold their house. He said he sold all the family's gold. He talked about his wife's jewellery, earrings. They literally sold everything that they had to give to these agents to organise their passage to the UK. And these agents, I mean, it's quite a full service they provide. In addition to those faked documents, there was also coaching of a kind. Yeah, I mean, one of the most remarkable things, I couldn't quite believe when we were doing this investigation, and we talked about what the agents had done for them, that he claimed that they'd arranged these fake documents. The agents had applied for and organised the university place for his wife.

7:18And then he gave us videos which were basically, as you say, coaching videos. You can hear actually the voice of an agent asking questions, almost kind of like training Sami's wife for their arrival at Heathrow Airport. There was a crib sheet as well, which said, don't get panic at the time of immigration. That was literally what he said, don't get panic. And there were a list of potential questions which Sammy's wife should think about so that she was ready and prepared to provide answers. Things like, what's the address of your university? Where are you going to stay when you get there? So it was really quite remarkable to see what level of service was provided by these agents for that£20 ,000.

8:13This university degree or qualification that she was seeking, I mean, did Sammy's wife have the necessary qualifications to get onto this course in the first place? He says that she did. I can't say for sure whether or not she did or she didn't. OK, so they get here on this student visa plus dependence. What happens next? Did she ever actually attend the university? No, she never went to the university at all. and I did say to Sammy can we be clear was it ever the intention that your wife would study and he said no it was never their intention it was clearly a way to get to the UK for his part he says that he was told which is not not so easy these days he was told by the agents that once they got to the UK they would be able to swap from a student visa which allows limited work 20 hours per week for sammy and also the wife to a working visa but that wasn't the case it was more difficult than that so when she didn't attend the university they arrived in early 2023 in the august of that year they received a letter from the home office saying that their visas were being cancelled and that they had two months to leave the uk or reapply in some other away.

9:30Well, they didn't leave the UK. And since then, they've been involved in this circle of applying and reapplying for leave to remain in the country, which is ongoing. But of course, during that period, the fact that they gave all their money to the agents when they got here, Sammy says they had just£1 ,500 in their pockets, they had nowhere to stay. They had been promised that they would be kind of met at Heathrow Airport, none of that happened. So they essentially had this sense of abandonment by the agents and they were on their own. And essentially, obviously, their problems then needed to be picked up by the UK, if you like, because they're in the country, no money, two children needing schooling, healthcare, and all the rest of it.

10:13Can I just be clear, on what basis are Sammy, his wife, the family, now applying to stay in the United Kingdom? What is their rationale for staying? We're here now, therefore, can we stay? Is that it? So they're looking for leave to remain, essentially kind of on human rights grounds, because they were living in pretty grim accommodation when they first arrived. And that was very difficult for the family. He told us that he threatened to take his own life outside a solicitor's office. After that, the police were called. The police notified social services, UK social services, intervened in their case.

10:52and as a result of that they were moved to different accommodation which was better than the original accommodation. Tell us about it all. I mean the conditions that they were living in both originally and where they are now. So when I first met Sammy which was about four months ago I went along to have a chat, find out what exactly was what his story was. He was pretty down and he cried a couple of times which you know obviously is very uncomfortable seeing this man in this predicament not knowing what was going to become of them. They were living in a terraced house. This is a small single room and I sleep on the floor.

11:27My wife, my daughter and my son, they sleep on the bed. Upstairs, three people there, the bachelors. They had a shared bathroom, they had a shared access to a shared kitchen, which they didn't kind of use much because we actually saw Sammy's wife kind of cooking in what was essentially a cupboard and the young children sharing a house with a house where single men living, obviously was was not good as a result of sort of all of that and their mental health social services intervened and moved them to new accommodation which we also went to which was better they had a room to themselves which had two beds in so he wasn't sleeping on the floor it appeared a lot cleaner and we understand that it was a house that didn't have any sort of single men occupancy so all around it seemed better for them but that was after the intervention of social services and also a commitment to pay£615 a month in a support payment as well.

12:25All of this whilst they're still in the immigration system. Lisa, they are getting this assistance from the state, but they're also getting assistance from some of those in the community. And you spoke to one of them, Asma. Tell me about her. Yeah, so because Sammy had arrived practically penniless because he'd given all the money to the agents, so these were cancelled, so he couldn't do any kind of legal work. They're obviously in a financial predicament. So we saw him again using a food bank. And interestingly, talking to a woman that runs the food bank called Asma Heck, she told us that she felt Samir's was not an isolated case.

13:01I know that some of them, as far as the home office is concerned, they've arrived legally, but then the paperwork they've supplied to the home office is actually fake paperwork, fake documentation that they've got processed from back home. She made the claim that in her estimate, one in ten of the people that she supports are either in the country illegally, so have used maybe fake documents or something, or have subsequently come on a legal visa and then have overstayed their visa. I just feel like that the Home Office's policies have been quite relaxed and there needs to be a tightened leash.

13:34It's just visas have been given left, right and centre so easily and so quickly. and the follow-up on the people who have entered into the country on those visas has been very poor. Let's try and dig into the data just a little bit more with one of the data and forensics journalists here at Sky, Jolie Santa Cruz. Jolie, do we have any idea as to the numbers that have overstayed, who've arrived here legally and then for whatever reason that visa has been removed, expired, whatever else, and they stay in the country? Do we know how many? No, that's not something that we have access to figures on or that the government collects reasonable estimates on.

14:12The only data that we do have access to is on the number of people who might switch from a student visa to a work visa and stay on in the country with other valid routes to remain. Yeah, and a complete absence of data in that regard. But Jolie, just in terms then of those who arrive on those kind of student dependent visas and make the switch, they are here legally. Do we know how many? Yeah, so from around 2019, this was becoming more common for international students to stay in the UK for longer, either at the end of their studies or maybe drop out of their course and switch on to a work visa.

14:53So around a quarter of the students who began their studies in 2019 were still in the UK five years on in 2024. And that was an increase from patterns that we had seen in the past. Do we have kind of headline figures for those who are coming here on student visas? I mean, let's just take the year that Sammy himself came into the country. The year that Sammy arrived was maybe the peak in terms of student visas issued. there were 657 ,000 student visas granted which was the highest on record for a year ending June and that included 154 ,000 student dependents so around a quarter of those were for dependents rather than the students themselves and that's now something that's changed so in the recent figures, we've seen the number of those visas for students decrease slightly as a consequence of that to around 436 ,000.

15:55But that's still higher than we'd seen in the years before 2020. We all understand that people are incredibly focused on this at the moment. So put it into a bit of context for us. Can we put a figure on legal migrants to this country versus those that are coming through the illegal means? Obviously, a lot of focus has been on illegal migration, but it should be said that high levels of net migration that we've seen in recent years have mostly been driven by legal migration. And that's because there was a huge liberalisation of immigration rules after Brexit and there was a lot of change in the rules over a short period of time and big increase in work and study visas in particular that was kind of encouraged because the government wanted to attract more care workers, more international students and also humanitarian crises over that period in Ukraine, Hong Kong, Afghanistan.

17:00So there were loads of reasons for this increase. It's hard to put a number on illegal migration because we can't say exactly how many people might come here illegally but for context there are around 852 ,000 valid visas issued in the latest year for work, family visas, study and that's down from around 1.3 million in the year to June 2023 when it was particularly high but that's compared to a peak of around just 48 ,000 small boat arrivals over one year. So in that kind of context, you can see that legal migration is a much bigger contributor. Julie, thanks very much. Let's bring Lisa Holland back in.

17:45So what exactly is Sami's current status? I mean, there'll be people listening to this going, why is he still in the country? So his current status is that it's unresolved, which means that he has an application into the Home Office for leave to remain. And he's awaiting a decision on that. It's his third from memory. So since they were told to leave the country, they have been applying and reapplying. And that he essentially is hoping that because the children are here, one of the children is not particularly well and need regular medical appointments, that the Home Office won't send him back.

18:21He said to us, maybe the Home Office will deport me, maybe they won't. But essentially, he felt like they wouldn't because his children were in the country and therefore they wouldn't be sent back. We've had a response from the Home Office, haven't we? Yes. So a Home Office spokesperson has said to us, since we've not been supplied with any identifying information in relation to this case, we're not in a position to comment on the claims made. However, stringent systems are in place to identify and prevent fraudulent student visa applications. And we will continue to take tough action against companies and agents who are seeking to abuse, exploit or defraud international students.

19:03I mean, the Home Office can say that stringent systems in place, but clearly not stringent enough to avoid the situation that you found Sammy and his family in. I mean, do you have any sympathy for the life that they are now living? Well, I mean, as I kind of alluded to earlier, it's always uncomfortable, isn't it, to see anybody, let alone a stranger, someone that's not, you know, friend or family, crying about the predicament that they're in. Sammy said to us it was not his intention to use fake documents but I did challenge him on that and I said well you knew that you didn't have the money in your bank account so therefore you couldn't make the visa application yourself could you which he accepted however of course he obviously has this dream of a new life he knows that his children need the health care he's delighted that they're in the education system but I also said to him what would you say to people who are frustrated that you're here you came here on fake with with the use of fake documents he didn't put the visa application in himself it's not entirely clear what he knew and when and and at what stage and again he kept saying you know it's my dream to be here so how do we fix this I mean that's the million dollar question isn't isn't it I mean also there's a role for universities as well in terms of looking at those applications.

20:32But it's fundamentally the issuing of the visas overseas, which is the problem. Lisa, Julie, thanks both very much indeed. And that's your lot. Lisa's full report can be seen over on SkyNews.com. The Daily's back tomorrow. Hello, Ed Conway here. Here's what might sound like a slightly random question. What do AirPods, bananas and a pair of shoddily made running trainers from the 1970s have in common? On the surface, not very much. But on my podcast, Stuff Matters, I will uncover the deeper stories behind each of them. You will see how, together, they tell a fascinating new story about the world we live in.

21:12The first full series of Stuff Matters is out now. Just search for it on your podcast app and follow.