Illegal Immigrants

Home Department written question – answered at on 10 October 2005.

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Photo of Andrew Rosindell Andrew Rosindell Opposition Whip (Commons)

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many illegal immigrants have been found within UK borders in each year since 1997.

Photo of Tony McNulty Tony McNulty Minister of State (Immigration, Citizenship and Nationality), Home Office

The number of persons who have had enforcement action initiated against them as illegal entrants in each year since 1997 is given in the accompanying table.

People who have had enforcement action initiated against them may then be removed from the country. There may be some barriers to removal including:

judicial or human rights applications; lack of documentation (without which an applicant cannot be returned); absence of a travel route, lack of co-operation from receiving countries or scheduled flight services (resulting in lengthy documentation processes or use of charter flights).

Alternatively, some people may decide to leave voluntarily, after enforcement action has been initiated against them and others may chose to leave via assisted voluntary returns programmes run by the International Organisation for Migration.

Information on persons who have had enforcement action initiated against them in 2004 will be included in the Control of Immigration: Statistics United Kingdom 2004. This was published in August and is available on the Home Office website at http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/rds/immigration1.html.

Persons against whom illegal entry enforcement action was initiated, 1997 to 2003(54)(5508110055)
Number of persons
1997 14,390
1998 16,500
1999 21,165
2000 47,325
2001 69,875
2002 48,050
2003(56)

(54)Illegal entrants detected and issued enforcement notice.

(55)Figures rounded to the nearest 5.

(56)Data were not of sufficient quality for publication in 2003, however it is estimated that 22,950 illegal entrants had enforcement action initiated against them in this year. Due to poor data quality this is not an official national statistic.

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