Landlords to be responsible for vetting migrant tenants

ILW

Conrad wrote: »

Discussing this with my lettings manager in my office here, already we can think of various ways around the system and whereby 'fixers' will emmerge and profiteer from putting in place, ermmm, arrangments for illeagles.

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Some sort of sanctuary for sick birds of prey?

neverdespairgirl

MacMickster wrote: »

If someone arrives in the UK on a tourist or student visa and fails to leave the country when they should, if they are still resident at the accommodation address that they gave when applying for their visa I would imagine that they are fairly easy for the Border Agency to remove.

I suspect that most anticipate this action, however, and move elsewhere so that they are not easily found. This proposal should make it harder for them to move elsewhere.

In my experience, the UKBA waits until it actually falls over people, rather than in any way actually looks for them.

A lot of the time they don't know if someone's left anyway.

N1AK

Graham_Devon wrote: »

I'm not sure how a landlord is supposed to decifer whether someone is an illegal immigrant or not. Therefore, although I am usually against landlords, I fail to see how they could be seen as liable.

As I've already said, my opinion is that the system would be too easy to work-around and thus I am dubious.

My contention is with this nonsense view that it is somehow impossible to do it at all. The system hasn't been defined yet, but it could be as simple as landlords needing to check identification. The standards required could be mandated and private firms would quickly pop-up that Landlords could send paperwork to and pay a small fee for them to validate, perform checks and insure them against fines.



The NHS one is more complicated, although frankly we're our own enemies on this issue as well. If someone turns up at their doctors/hospital in the severe stages of kidney failure (for example) having never been to the doctors before about it then there is a higher than normal chance this might be health tourism. A remotely decent expert system (or fraud department) could look for the tell-tale signs like this and investigate as required.