Abuse of immigration in the academic community

Abuse of immigration in the academic community

It has been determined that they are people looking to obtain a UK visa by registering to attend academic conferences in the United Kingdom.  People are sending fake applications to the academic conference in hope that they will be chosen to attend the event.  Once they have been selected they file for their UK visa noting that they will be attending an academic event in the country.  This improves the chances of their visa application being accepted.

Stephen Taylor who gives lectures on strategic business management at Strathclyde University has said in regard to the problem: “It is well know in academic circles that if you are holding a conference you are going to be targeted by people who will use it as a way of getting you to issue saying they are participating in a conference.  They can then sue the letter to help them get a visa.  It’s endemic.” 

Taylor hosted an international academic conference this May and thought that of the one hundred applicants they received six of them had the potential to be false.  Taylor said “In one case, we were contacted by someone from an African country saying they were the provincial of a resource based company that wanted to send three employees to the event.  Straight away we knew this did not tie in with what we were doing, because it’s an academic conference.  But they kept hassling us for three months to send them a letter.  My colleague received one call a week from them.  I suspect it was a fairly large scale operation.”

www.strath.ac.uk