You can lose prisoners for the simple reason prisons must release them unless there is legal authority to hold them (prison governors can be charged with unlawful imprisonment just like anybody else and it carries a very heavy sentence). So if HO fails to provide said authority for a foreign prisoner - they go free.

Needless to say, it would be wrong to dignify the way HO track these matters with the title "system", as any judge or prison governor can confirm. That's before you start on trivia like they have British spouses and small kids

For Heaven's sake that's almost 50% !!

Of course, nothing has been said about how the inspections were conducted and on what criteria the colleges were chosen for inspection, nor of the time span of the inspection period (is that 256 inspections in three months ? Six years ? A decade ?). It could be that the inspections were made on "suspicious" colleges only, in which case it would be a great demonstration of fine-tuned sleuthing and well-placed administrative effort.

Nah, can't be.

But if it's random inspections, then it's high time to put an end to student visas !

This does beg the question, though : why aren't colleges inspected BEFORE they are allowed to submit requests for visas ?

This is shaping out nicely as an example of the hyperreal.

... that 'foreign nationals' are only those from outside the EU? Or are we going to use our Schengen opt-out to allow this to cover EU nationals too?

I also assume they'll check *everyone* in and out, can't exclude UK Nationals without putting them through the system first to make sure they *are* UK Nationals.

Also the immigration stuff is a bit of a waste of time, as I don't see them cracking down on illegal immigration any time soon, properly implementing/enforcing the whole asylum system or working out any way of sorting out EU internal immigration - the latter is perfectly legal but also the source of much immigration volume & many perceived problems.

Let's face it, they fail to use what they already have, and can't do much about many of the most recent issues.

All they ever seem to manage to achieve is to cause problems for those who do play by the rules, or who shouldn't actually be covered at all.

I was looking forward to receiving my new Judenstern from the UK government this year.

Bastards! Get you all excited about being singled out from the crowd as something worthy of extra surveillance and then they go and push out the timeline.