Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Home Office
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead on 2016-05-25.
To ask Her Majesty’s Government, for each local authority in England and Wales, what is the total number of Eritrean residents who have been listed on successful asylum applications by individuals seeking reunification with close family members in the UK.
Lord Ahmad of Wimbledon
There are several different routes for families to be reunited safely in the UK. Applications for family reunion can be received both in country and out of country and are processed by a number of casework units within the Home Office depending on the particular route applied through including International Operations, Settlement, Complex Casework and Asylum Operations.
The way these applications are processed and the method used to store the data on the main immigration database means that not all of the data regarding sponsors is recorded on centrally collated statistical databases and could only be obtained at disproportionate cost by examination of thousands of case records.
Within the visa tables of the Home Office’s quarterly Immigration Statistics, family reunion applications from dependants of those with refugee status or humanitarian protection in the UK (made under Part 11 of the Immigration Rules) are included in the ‘Family: other’ category. Whilst this ‘Family: other’ category includes a small number of other applications, the vast majority relate to family reunion and hence the published figures provide a good indication of trends for family reunion cases. There were 616 entry clearance visas granted to Eritreans in the ‘Family: other’ category in the year ending March 2016.
Source: Home Office, Immigration Statistics January to March 2016 Family topic https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/immigration-statistics-january-to-march-2016/family#visas
