Children from Ukraine are not a security risk to the UK: they have been forced to leave their homes due to a brutal armed conflict. You might think this was obvious. Yet the Home Office needs a reminder: it is currently delaying and deterring Ukrainian children from coming to the UK due to supposed security concerns.
At the beginning of the war, images of Ukrainians queuing for UK visas across Europe were all over the news. People had to travel hundreds of miles and queue for hours, if not days. They had to stay in locations with which they were not familiar, often in accommodation that was unsafe, unsuitable, or expensive.
This catastrophe was the product of a Home Office policy that everyone from Ukraine who wanted to apply to come to the UK, under the special arrangements designed for Ukrainians, had to attend a Visa Application Centre before they were able to submit their application.
The purpose of this appointment was so that people could submit “biometric data”—a photo of their face and their fingerprints. Why did the Home Office demand this before the application? It wanted to check relevant government databases to ensure that there was no history of criminal conduct or links to associations that may impact national security.
In the face of the dawning reality that this policy was administratively unsustainable during the Ukraine crisis, the Home Office changed the rule. Now, if you have a valid international Ukrainian passport, you can apply online and then give your biometric information when in the UK.
With the change, the queues at Visa Application Centres became more manageable, and the news moved on to document the other bureaucratic woes people were facing. This was, at least relatively speaking, progress. But it has proved to be far from the end of the problem.
Not everyone has an international passport. Young children in particular often do not have their own passport, even if all other members of their family do. Those helping Ukrainians trying to get to the UK report this is still a common situation.
When this situation occurs, it essentially throws families into much of the same personal chaos all Ukrainians faced in the first weeks of the war. It is a less visible form of chaos, but the results are the same: people fleeing are delayed or wholly deterred from coming to the UK.
The government has a legitimate interest in border security but requiring Ukrainian children to submit biometric information before applying is irrational—and possibly illegal.
Lawyers often say that while a government policy can be unlawful because it is irrational, such cases are rarely seen “in the wild” as the legal test is so difficult to meet. But irrationality seems to be running wild here. The Home Office could fix this situation easily, and it should do so urgently.
