‘I had no concept how life can be’: Contained in the lives of those that overstay their visas and go underground

“I just wanted to save my life,” says Dhanabal, who got here to Britain from India to review. But it was solely the visa that got here with the college place that him, and his plan was all the time to remain on after it expired.

The 26-year-old depends on cash-in-hand jobs to outlive, ready in Sheffield for a name from a thriller man he calls “the boss” to provide him building or cleansing work for “pocket money” and meals.

“I had no idea when I came to the UK how my life would be – I just wanted to leave India,” says softly spoken Dhanabal, who’s sporting a gray tracksuit, with a neat haircut and beard. “I didn’t think about what it would be like here.”

Dhanabal – we’re not utilizing his household identify – says his politics received him into hassle with the Indian police and he paid an company £7,000 to rearrange a college place in Britain.

Sky News has seen a duplicate of his passport, which exhibits he arrived in 2021 on a scholar visa that was resulting from expire just a few months in the past.

He did a month of a grasp’s course in enterprise administration at a college within the north of England, he says, however discovered it “too hard”. The faculty the place Dhanabal was given a spot advised us they could not touch upon particular person instances due to scholar confidentiality.

His story is a uncommon perception into the world of those that overstay their visas and go underground.

But with internet migration to the UK at report ranges – 606,000 individuals got here to Britain from overseas in the course of the 12 months to December 2022 – Sky News can reveal the federal government has no public information on the dimensions of those that overstay their visa and fail to return to their nation of origin.

The system has “collapsed”, says Vasuki Murahathas, who has labored as an immigration solicitor for twenty-four years. She estimates the variety of calls from overstayers asking for recommendation has gone up 50% within the final yr. There’s no means of independently verifying this.

Her determined purchasers wish to know the right way to change to working visas – which she says the federal government has simply made harder – or discover different methods to legally keep within the UK.

People “disappear and hide”, she says, as a result of they can not discover sponsors for jobs, usually falling into poverty and low paid cash-in-hand work after they cannot discover a approach to kind out their immigration scenario.

“Some are really suffering,” she says. “The government is allowing people to come as students – they want more people to come as skilled workers but people are misusing the system to enter the UK.

“Some individuals are coming figuring out they’ll overstay and nobody can do something.”

Dhanabal isn’t the one one who is struggling to outlive after coming to the UK on a scholar visa which has now both been curtailed or expired.

Suresh, 35, exhibits us right into a again backyard in London the place he’s mowing the garden and tidying the pathway. He tugs on the inexperienced jumper he’s sporting, as he explains how he has been given garments, not cash, in trade for his day’s work.

“Sometimes people offer me food, sometimes I get £10 or £20,” he says matter-of-factly. “Sometimes I do gardening or cleaning jobs. I don’t get work every day. It’s a hard life. One day I will be okay.”

Suresh has lived like this for seven years after arriving from India on a scholar visa. He did not begin the course on the college in Wales the place he was awarded a spot.

“I don’t want to go to college,” he admits.

Some 1.1 million potential college students and their members of the family who got here on examine visas from January 2021 to March 2023.

But the Home Office advised Sky News it could possibly’t present information on precisely how many individuals have overstayed visas over the past three years.

The most up-to-date statistics obtainable are for the yr ending March 2020 – which confirmed there have been 1.9 million visas that expired throughout that point. There was no report of departure for 83,600 individuals whose work, examine or household visa expired in that interval.

Of that quantity, there have been 54,689 individuals who arrived on vacationer visas and seven,236 individuals who got here on scholar visas unaccounted for.

Universities within the UK depend on the tens of millions of kilos international college students deliver with them in tuition charges. According to information from the HESA – the statutory information assortment company for UK increased schooling establishments – there have been 679,970 worldwide college students learning within the UK in 2021/22.

‘Overstaying is in opposition to the regulation’

But potential abuse of scholar visas as a approach to get to the UK means universities are beneath strain to weed out candidates who aren’t real.

The physique which represents universities within the UK says targets set by the federal government for course completion and enrolment by worldwide college students are at present being met.

Some 85% of worldwide college students should full their course, and 90% should not less than enrol in any other case a college is liable to being banned from recruiting from overseas.

Jamie Arrowsmith, director of Universities UK International, says the sector is “very well” geared up to deal with the problem and is “trying to ensure that those people that are applying to come to the UK” are “genuine students and that they’re here to study”.

A Home Office spokesperson says: “Those who have no right to remain in the UK and do not return home voluntarily should be in no doubt of our determination to remove them. Overstaying is against the law, unnecessarily costs the taxpayer money, and is unfair on law-abiding migrants who come to the UK through the legal channels.”