NO2ID

Certain foreigners will be forced to get an ID card before the next election. If the Tories win and then repeal the legislation, is it likely that they will keep the IDs for foreigners and just get rid of it for UK/EU citizens?

If this happens will NO2ID still have the same support and goals? Because while obviously UK citizens can oppose cards for themselves there should be some benefits to making foreigners have cards?

(note; don't really know too much about this but just a thought I had)

Cheers

There's a massive amount of spin surrounding this subject, and it is hard to untangle what policy is, and how much government activity is real.

Though "ID cards for foreigners" have notionally been under way since November, NO2ID has yet to see a single example of the card itself being issued. (If you have one, get in touch!)

It is important to understand that the whole "ID cards for foreigners" meme is a rhetorical trick by the goverment to (1) popularise "ID cards" by associating them with popular anxiety about foreigners, and (2) make the ID scheme proper seem inevitable by suggesting it is already happening, and (3) provide a pretext for introducing and testing some of the data-sharing and monitoring powers that are concomitants of the ID scheme via the path of least resistance.

If you approve of visas then there's nothing inherently wrong with less readily spoofed biometric visas. I can't see the Tories or any other party with a hope of power as likely to get rid of visa control for at least some visitors or foreign residents.

Biometric visas issued under the UK Borders Act need not be issued to all non-EEA visitors, and visa-waiver programmes are in fact still in effect, for the great majority of visitors, though you wouldn't know it from home Office propaganda. They need not be cards; and they need not involve the elaborate security theatre, nor the massive data-sharing, nor the minatory behaviour of the BIA (or whatever they are called this year) towards employers designed to elicit ID checks on everyone.

All that policy can - and should - be changed by an incoming government.
Without the need to use "foreigners" as a propaganda tool for the ID scheme, nor a fear strategy designed to preserve an incumbent administration then there is no reason for any of it.

Thanks for the reply but I'm not sure if you answered my question.



You seem to be talking about visa waivers and things which are applicable to tourists etc. Obviously tourists who need visas now will not be getting ID cards instead, and their biometric information isn't needed (though who knows).

And obviously you have to have visas for people here to study, on work permits, coming to settle and things like that. But there's no need to replace the visa with an ID card, is there? No administration would get rid of visa control. But if getting an ID card becomes mandatory (under the present govt) for those who would previously just have been given a visa, then would you say that an incoming administration would reverse that? They introduced police registration (long time ago) and nobody made a fuss out of that, it's equivalent to a hidden £34 extra visa fee.

FOr example there's no obligation to update an address for a visa, yet if ID cards were issued then suddenly every student in the UK would suddenly be obliged to contact the home office every time they move, which can be many times a year. I don't know how the updating would work - online, visit the ID office?? anything just opens up many other problems.

What the government is today calling an "ID card issued to a foreigner" is in fact a biometric visa, issued under the various immigration acts, not under the Identity Cards Act.

Guy's point is that a future government that abolishes ID cards would probably still carry on issuing visas, but would call them by that name, not try to pass them off as ID cards.

Hmm, interesting.... I would like to ask if this biometric visa you are talking about is to be stuck in the passport or is it actually a card? I have a student visa now which is in my passport but say if I want to continue with PhD then do I need to get a new visa AND a card?

The info on the visa, is it stored on the Identity register or stored with the visa offices? The info I gave for my visa was about the course I am studying and academics and ability to pay fees. Surely this cannot fit on the identity register. If i give the same info to the government as for a card, and my visa is a plastic card not passport sticker.... then it is an ID card whether or not it is called a visa! But if its only a change from sticker to plastic.. why bother???

I went to a public meeting in the Isle of Man where the civil servant resonsible for passport issues gave a briefing to the local Filipino Community. In response to the question 'What exactly is the 'ID Card for Foreigners about?' it was stated:

'It as a stand alone scheme designed to be included in the actual ID Cards scheme should it ever go ahead'.

Essentially the Government replaced the visa sticker in the passport with a plastic card created by DVLA and included a fingerprint check as part of the issuance / renewal. The details are not recorded on the National Identity Register which has not yet been built.

In other words a pure propoganda exercise designed to get a public message out that ID Cards have arrived a no one minds.

It's a separate card - but brilliantly, just like the idiotic two-part UK photo driving licence, the "card" isn't valid as a separate travel document, and when crossing the border must always be presented with your passport.

In other words, rather than sticking your visa in your passport so you can't easily lose it, it's now a small, easily-mislaid, separate piece of plastic.

We have yet to see a card. The government says there will be cards for students. But the form of visas can be arbitrarily altered.

The effect is precisely the same, however, and the definitions in the Identity Cards Act are such that, for the purposes of that act, a biometric visa in a passport, or a passport itself, may be an "identity card". That definition is effectively meaningless until there exists a National Identity Register, except that it is specifically a criminal offence to be in possession of someone else's without a recognised excuse.