Migrants who overstay their visas will be removed from the UK, a minister has vowed after it was revealed they make up nearly 40% of all asylum claimants.
The Home O¹ffice said about 40,000 people who came to Britain from abroad as students, workers or visitors last year have sought asylum.
Around a quarter, 10,000 people, had lived in taxpayer-funded hotels or other Government-funded accommodation despite entering the country with a visa that suggested they would not need benefits or had enough money to cover living costs.
It has raised fears that the visa system is being exploited as a backdoor route to permanent UK residency and Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has ordered officials to investigate.
Border Security Minister Angela Eagle told Times Radio on Monday: “We inherited the system we inherited with a 70% fall in any kind of processing with 100,000 people in dispersal accommodation or hotels who weren’t even being processed by the previous government.”
She added: “When they came in on a visa they actually told us that they had the means to exist in the country without relying on public funds.”
Asked whether people who had come to Britain on a visa would be taken out of tax-payer funded hotels, Ms Eagle said: “They will certainly and if they’re overstaying they’ll be removed from the country.”
It comes as Sir Keir Starmer on Monday hosted a summit in London with ministers from 40 countries , including the United States, China, Vietnam, Iraq, Italy and Albania, to discuss illegal immigration.
The Prime Minister will call for them to work together to stop people-smuggling gangs in the same way they would terrorists.
Ministers and enforcement staff will discuss international co-operation on migration, as well as supply routes, criminal finances and online adverts for people smuggling during the meeting.
Officials from social media companies Meta, X and TikTok will also join discussions on how to crack down on the online promotion of irregular migration
The Government has said £33million will be spent to disrupt people-smuggling networks and boost prosecutions, including paying foreign prosecutors to hunt people smugglers across the world.
Opening the summit, Sir Keir said: “Illegal migration is a massive driver of global insecurity.
“It undermines our ability to control who comes here, and that makes people angry. It makes me angry, frankly, because it’s unfair on ordinary working people who pay the price, from the cost of hotels to our public services struggling under the strain.
“And it’s unfair on the illegal migrants themselves, because these are vulnerable people being ruthlessly exploited by vile gangs.
“We must each take decisive action in our own countries to deal with them.”
