On Tuesday 4th August in a major victory for campaigners protesting against the “hostile environment” policy, the Home Office announced to scrap the controversial decision-making used since 2015 for people applying for UK visas.
The “streaming algorithm”, which campaigners have described as racist, has been used to process visa applications to the UK. It will be abandoned from Friday, according to a letter from Home Office solicitors.
The decision to scrap the algorithm appears ahead of a judicial review from the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants (JCWI) which was to challenge the Home Office’s Artificial Intelligence system that filters UK visa applications.
Chai Patel, JCWI’s legal policy director, said, “The Home Office’s own independent review of the Windrush scandal found it was oblivious to the racist assumptions and systems it operates.
“This streaming tool took decades of institutionally racist practices, such as targeting particular nationalities for immigration raids, and turned them into software. The immigration system needs to be rebuilt from the ground up to monitor such bias and to root it out.”
In their submission to the high court, JWCI and the technology justice campaign group Foxglove said the algorithm created three channels for applicants, including a so-called “fast lane” that would lead to “speedy boarding for white people” from the most favoured countries in the system.
In the Home Office letter, its solicitors confirm that the home secretary, Priti Patel, “has decided that she will discontinue the use of the streaming tool to assess visa applications, pending a substitute review of its operation”.
A Home Office spokesperson in a statement to The Guardian said, “We have been reviewing how the visa application streaming tool operates and will be redesigning our processes to make them even more streamlined and secure.
“We do not accept the allegations Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants made in their judicial review claim and whilst litigation is still ongoing it would not be appropriate for the department to comment any further.”
