A new study has just revealed that British emigration officials take just 11 minutes to scrutinize and pass visa applications. Most of the time this is not something that would shock people, but some are considering this to be unsafe since it takes them just 11 minutes to pass visa applications from places like Pakistan, which are known to be a hotbed for terrorism.

Security concerns have been fueled by the fact that officials may not be checking into supporting evidence in thousands of these applications to make sure that they are legit. This goes for the applications that are received from Afghanistan and Pakistan as well. Also, there has been no back up telephone interviews on these applications since a controversial outsourced visa system was implemented just last year.

Since the new system stared up, there have been 66,415 visa applications with just 11 people to go over them. Overall, this means that this is the equivalent to 43 applications each day in an eight-hour work day of a 20 day month. This gives each official only 11 minutes to make vital security checks before another officer in a separate country decides whether to grant entry to the UK.

Although every passport is checked, officials only examine other supporting documents in 80 percent of their cases. This means about 13,283 applications do not get additional evidence checked. The Home Office, however, has rejected any reports of loopholes in the emigration procedure.

The Minister of Borders and Emigration, Phil Woolas, said that the calculations are completely wrong. It also paints a false picture of the decision making process. He went on to say that they have over 200 staff who deal with applications from Pakistan, not just 11 like what some reports state. Thus, each application is given longer than 11 minutes.

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Filed under Genearl Emigration News