Hosted by www.ijjo.org

Chapter 4 | Monitoring Entry To Provide Protection
The establishment of these Minors Teams and
the Best Practice guidance are clearly very positive
moves but comments made by children dealt with
by the Immigration Service still remain negative in
part. In striving to meet a number of potentially
conflicting objectives, the Service appears not to
be prioritizing the best interests of the child above
immigration control imperatives. The Best Practice
guidance describes the Service’s role as follows:
■
■
■
To minimise welfare risks to unaccompanied
minors seeking entry to the U.K.
To define the Immigration Service’s duty of care
to unaccompanied minors by explaining the role
of Social Services
To assist in developing robust controls on the
travel to the U.K. of unaccompanied minors by
increasing sponsor checks and testing the credibility
of the applicant whenever possible. 80%
of unaccompanied asylum seeking children claim
asylum in country. The new measures should
contribute to the departmental business aim
of reducing asylum intake.
This last objective raises questions about the Immigration
Service’s assertion that it owes a duty of care
to unaccompanied or separated children and its
claimed compliance with wider policies relating to
the child asylum claims. As is discussed later in this
Report, unaccompanied or separated children are
not expected to participate in an interview about
the substance of their application for asylum: their
screening interviews are only supposed to deal with
issues of identity and establish the routes they took
to the U.K. Children are also not supposed to be
examined at their port of entry about the credibility
of their account of persecution or their reasons for
needing international protection. However, the
requirement of “reducing asylum intake” clearly
encourages such questioning and distracts immigration
officers from their duty to identify possible
victims of trafficking, since such identifications
potentially increase rather than decrease the number
of recognized refugees.
4.2 Amendment of the
Immigration Rules
This contradictory approach was also adopted
when the Immigration Rules were amended
in 12 February 2006 to introduce new paragraphs
46A to F, which impose new and additional
requirements for visitors who are under 18. Unaccompanied
children wishing to visit the U.K. now
have to demonstrate that suitable arrangements
have been made for their travel to and reception
and care in the U.K. and that they have a parent
or guardian in their home country or country of
habitual residence who is ultimately responsible for
their care. In addition, if a child is a visa national 14
the child’s parent or guardian will have to inform
the entry clearance officer whether the child will
be travelling to the U.K. alone or with a nominated
adult. The unaccompanied or separated child’s
entry clearance document (now called a vignette)
is endorsed with that adult’s name and details and
is not valid for travel with anyone else. The Home
Office has indicated that the new Rules were brought
in to ensure that:
[Unaccompanied or separated] children cannot enter
the U.K. in the company of an adult who is either
unrelated or with whom they have little connection.
By doing this they can evade the extra scrutiny of the
reception and care arrangements awaiting the child
in the U.K. which is given to children who travel unaccompanied.
Some instances can be well intentioned but
highly irregular, but in others the child is used to facilitate
fraud, and can endure serious physical harm. 15 43
Hosted by www.ijjo.org