3.3.2 Passengers granted leave to enter on arrival in the UK Statistics on passengers granted leave to enter the UK are determined by the immigration officer at border control where the information is derived from landing cards and is dependent on the passenger entering their nationality correctly and this being checked by the immigration officer. The classification of unknown nationality and stateless available for these immigration officers is: “Persons officially designated as stateless or of unknown nationality in a passport or other travel document”.70 These leave to enter statistics for individuals of “unknown or other” nationality or who are “stateless” are available through the UK Border Agency’s published statistics (Figure 5). A consistent pattern emerges which shows the majority of journeys are made by passengers either returning after a temporary absence (72 per cent) or visiting the UK (25 per cent). These numbers appear high, particularly when compared to the other data sets investigated. This is for two main reasons. First of all, the data relates only to arrivals, and therefore an individual travelling into the UK more than once in a year will be counted more than once. At present the UK does not operate embarkation controls, and therefore the number of these people leaving the UK and/or never returning is not recorded and cannot be compared. Secondly, the stateless category in this instance includes those individuals grouped as: “Stateless – Defined Article 1 1954 Convention”, “Stateless Refugee – Defined 1951 Convention”, “Stateless Refugee – Other”, and “Nationality Unknown Officially Designated as Stateless”. The published immigration statistics again includes recognised refugees in the “stateless” category, which has inflated the overall numbers significantly. 70 Detailed in an email received on 3 May 2007 from the Home Office Migration Statistics in response to a request for this information made by UNHCR. On file with the authors. in the United Kingdom 37