Facial recognition proposed as UK’s immigration fix by Tory leader Badenoch

The way to reform the UK’s immigration system is not the introduction of mandatory digital ID, according to the leader of the official opposition in parliament. Facial recognition is the tool UK authorities need to make progress toward orderly migration, according to a new proposal.

Embattled Conservative Party Leader Kemi Badenoch plans to use facial recognition to identify immigrants for deportation from the country. Facial recognition would be deployed in these cases without warning, Sky News reports.

Biometric tracking of undocumented immigrants is part of a larger plan to remove 150,000 people from the country each year, costed at about 1.6 billion pounds (roughly US$2.15 billion). The plan to institute a “Removals Force,” which would replace Home Office Immigration Enforcement is inspired by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement,

Police would also be expected to perform immigration checks on all people arrested or stopped. How people will prove their status in these cases was not detailed, but will surely be questioned, given the regularity with which the Labour government repeats that “it will not be a criminal offence to not hold a digital ID and police will not be able to demand to see a digital ID as part of a ‘stop and search’” as it tries to rally support for its proposed immigration fix.

In the U.S., ICE has been using a facial recognition smartphone app to bring biometric immigration enforcement to communities far from the border, prompting opposition lawmakers to question the legal basis for the application.

The broader expansion of the use of live facial recognition by UK police, which passed 50,000 people scanned in August, has been dogged by controversy due to the lack of regulation around the technology, but not slowed.

Article Topics

biometric identification  |  biometrics  |  border security  |  facial recognition  |  identity verification  |  immigration  |  real-time biometrics  |  UK