3.3.1 Visas and entry clearance
Visas or grants of entry clearance are issued outside the UK to those who are seeking to
come to the UK, almost always within one of the categories specified within the Immigration
Rules.69 Applicants have to fulfil specified criteria depending on the category under which
they seek entry. The groups that populate the published statistics referring to the “stateless”
and “unspecified nationality” groupings make it impossible to draw any reliable conclusions.
This is because “‘Refugees (Article 1, 1951 Convention)” and “Stateless - Defined Article 1
1954 Convention” are conflated to form one “stateless” category.
Upon request and for the purposes of this research, however, the Home Office’s Migration
Statistics Team has provided disaggregated data on visas and grants of entry clearance
issued outside the UK to stateless persons. The disaggregated data is separated into two
groups, thereby identifying those who are “Stateless - Defined Article 1 1954 Convention”
as a distinct group. This disaggregation is shown in Figure 4 below. It demonstrates that the
number of “stateless persons” granted visas or entry clearance abroad to come to the UK is
low, at no more than 2,000 per year. The number is also decreasing year on year. This data,
however, must be viewed with the caveat that it includes duplications when one individual is
granted more than one visa in the same year, so the numbers of stateless individuals granted
visas or entry clearance is likely to be lower.
Figure 4: Entry Clearance and visas issued to persons to show disaggregation by “Stateless
Person - 1954 Convention” and “Refugee - 1951 Convention” as well as “other and
unknown” nationality, 2005 – 2010
UK Border Agency “nationality” category
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
Stateless Person (1954 Convention)
1,798
1,699
1,128
837
708
575
Refugee (1951 Convention)
1,759
1,548
1,702
3,697
3,998
3,521
Other and unknown
8,304
7,846
8,292
5,246
3,196
2,655
9 000
Number of entry clearance visas issued
8 000
7 000
6 000
5 000
Stateless
Refugee
4 000
Other and
unknown
3 000
2 000
1 000
0
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
Source: Data obtained from the Home Office Migration Statistics (via email on 4 October 2011)
as an unpublished subset of published immigration statistics derived from Before entry data
tables, Immigration Statistics April - June 2011, 2005-2010.
69
36
HC 395.
Mapping statelessness