‘I had no idea how life would be’: Inside the lives of those who overstay their visas and go underground
“I just wanted to save my life,” says Dhanabal, who came to Britain from India to study. But it was only the visa that came with the university place that interested him, and his plan was always to stay on after it expired.
The 26-year-old relies on cash-in-hand jobs to survive, waiting in Sheffield for a call from a mystery man he calls “the boss” to give him construction or cleaning work for “pocket money” and food.
“I had no idea when I came to the UK how my life would be – I just wanted to leave India,” says softly spoken Dhanabal, who is wearing a grey tracksuit, with a neat haircut and beard. “I didn’t think about what it would be like here.”
Dhanabal – we’re not using his family name – says his politics got him into trouble with the Indian police and he paid an agency £7,000 to arrange a university place in Britain.
Dhanabal’s story is a rare insight into the life of a visa overstayer
Sky News has seen a copy of his passport, which shows he arrived in 2021 on a student visa that was due to expire a few months ago.
He did a month of a master’s course in business management at a university in the north of England, he says, but found it “too hard”. The college where Dhanabal was given a place told us they couldn’t comment on individual cases because of student confidentiality.
His story is a rare insight into the world of those who overstay their visas and go underground.
But with net migration to the UK at record levels – 606,000 people came to Britain from abroad during the 12 months to December 2022 – Sky News can reveal the government has no public data on the scale of those who overstay their visa and fail to return to their country of origin.
The system has “collapsed”, says Vasuki Murahathas, who has worked as an immigration solicitor for 24 years. She estimates the number of calls from overstayers asking for advice has gone up 50% in the last year. There’s no way of independently verifying this.
Her desperate clients want to know how to switch to working visas – which she says the government has just made more difficult – or find other ways to legally stay in the UK.
People “disappear and hide”, she says, because they can’t find sponsors for jobs, often falling into poverty and low paid cash-in-hand work when they can’t find a way to sort out their immigration situation.
“Some are really suffering,” she says. “The government is allowing people to come as students – they want more people to come as skilled workers but people are misusing the system to enter the UK.
“Some people are coming knowing they can overstay and no one can do anything.”
Immigration solicitor Vasuki Murahathas
Dhanabal is not the only person who is struggling to survive after coming to the UK on a student visa which has now either been curtailed or expired.
Suresh, 35, shows us into a back garden in London where he is mowing the lawn and tidying the pathway. He tugs on the green jumper he is wearing, as he explains how he has been given clothes, not money, in exchange for his day’s work.
“Sometimes people offer me food, sometimes I get £10 or £20,” he says matter-of-factly. “Sometimes I do gardening or cleaning jobs. I don’t get work every day. It’s a hard life. One day I will be okay.”
Suresh has lived like this for seven years after arriving from India on a student visa. He didn’t start the course at the university in Wales where he was awarded a place.
“I don’t want to go to college,” he admits.
Suresh is paid in clothes for clearing a garden
Some 1.1 million prospective students and their family members who came on study visas from January 2021 to March 2023.
But the Home Office told Sky News it can’t provide data on exactly how many people have overstayed visas over the last three years.
The most recent statistics available are for the year ending March 2020 – which showed there were 1.9 million visas that expired during that time. There was no record of departure for 83,600 people whose work, study or family visa expired in that period.
Of that number, there were 54,689 people who arrived on tourist visas and 7,236 people who came on student visas unaccounted for.
Universities in the UK rely on the millions of pounds foreign students bring with them in tuition fees. According to data from the HESA – the statutory data collection agency for UK higher education institutions – there were 679,970 international students studying in the UK in 2021/22.
‘Overstaying is against the law’
But potential abuse of student visas as a way to get to the UK means universities are under pressure to weed out applicants who aren’t genuine.
The body which represents universities in the UK says targets set by the government for course completion and enrolment by international students are currently being met.
Some 85% of international students must complete their course, and 90% must at least enrol otherwise a university is at risk of being banned from recruiting from abroad.
Jamie Arrowsmith, director of Universities UK International, says the sector is “very well” equipped to address the issue and is “trying to ensure that those people that are applying to come to the UK” are “genuine students and that they’re here to study”.
A Home Office spokesperson says: “Those who have no right to remain in the UK and do not return home voluntarily should be in no doubt of our determination to remove them. Overstaying is against the law, unnecessarily costs the taxpayer money, and is unfair on law-abiding migrants who come to the UK through the legal channels.”
The last blast furnaces left operating in Britain could see their fate sealed within days, after their Chinese owners took the decision to cut off the crucial supply of ingredients keeping them running.
Jingye, the owner of British Steel in Scunthorpe, has, according to union representatives, cancelled future orders for the iron ore, coal and other raw materials needed to keep the furnaces running.
The upshot is that they may have to close next month – even sooner than the earliest date suggested for its closure.
Read more: Thousands of jobs at risk as British Steel consults unions over closure
The fate of the blast furnaces – the last two domestic sources of virgin steel, made from iron ore rather than recycled – is likely to be determined in a matter of days, with the Department for Business and Trade now actively pondering nationalisation.
The upshot is that even as Britain contends with a trade war across the Atlantic, it is now working against the clock to secure the future of steelmaking at Scunthorpe.
The talks between the government and Jingye broke down last week after the Chinese company, which bought British Steel out of receivership in 2020, rejected a £500m offer of public money to replace the existing furnaces with electric arc furnaces.
The sum is the same one it offered to Tata Steel, which has shut down the other remaining UK blast furnaces in Port Talbot and is planning to build electric furnaces – which have far lower carbon emissions.
These steel workers could soon be out of work
However, the owners argue that the amount is too little to justify extra investment at Scunthorpe, and said last week they were now consulting on the date of shutting both the blast furnaces and the attached steelworks.
Since British Steel is the main provider of steel rails to Network Rail – as well as other construction steels available from only a few sites in the world – the closure would leave the UK more reliant on imports for critical infrastructure sites.
However, since the site belongs to its Chinese owners, a decision to nationalise the site would involve radical steps government officials are wary of taking.
They also fear leaving taxpayers exposed to a potentially loss-making business for the long run.
The dilemma has been heightened by the sharp turn in geopolitical sentiment following Donald Trump’s return to the White House.
The incipient trade war and threatened cut in American support to Europe have sparked fresh calls for countries to act urgently to secure their own supplies of critical materials, especially those used for defence and infrastructure.
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Gareth Stace, head of UK Steel, the industry lobby group, said: “Talks seem to have broken down between government and British Steel.
“My advice to government is: please, Jonathan Reynolds, Business Secretary, get back round that negotiating table, thrash out a deal, and if a deal can’t be found in the next few days, then I fear for the very future of the sector, but also here for Scunthorpe steelworks.”
British Steel declined to comment.
UK
Prince Andrew’s Pitch@Palace branded ‘crude attempt to enrich himself’ as Chinese spy documents set to be released
Prince Andrew’s efforts to make money from his Pitch@Palace project have been branded as a “crude attempt to enrich himself” at the expense of “unsuspecting tech founders”, as new documents may shed more light on what he and his team have been attempting to sell.
Today is the deadline for documents to be released relating to Prince Andrew‘s former senior adviser Dominic Hampshire and his interactions with the alleged Chinese spy Yang Tengbo.
In February, an immigration tribunal heard how the intelligence services had contacted Mr Hampshire about Mr Yang back in 2022. Mr Yang helped set up Pitch@Palace China, a branch of the duke’s scheme to help young entrepreneurs.
The alleged Chinese spy, Yang Tengbo, has links with Prince Andrew
Yang Tengbo. Pic: Pitch@Palace
Judges banned Mr Yang from the UK, saying his association with a senior royal had made Prince Andrew “vulnerable” and posed a threat to national security. Mr Yang challenged that decision at the Special Immigration Appeals Commission (SIAC).
Since that hearing, media organisations have applied for certain documents relating to the case and Mr Hampshire’s support for Mr Yang to be made public. SIAC agreed to release some information of public interest. It is hoped they may include more details on deals that he was trying to do on behalf of Prince Andrew.
So what do we know about potential deals for Pitch@Palace so far?
In February, Sky News confirmed that palace officials had a meeting last summer with tech funding company StartupBootcamp to discuss a potential tie-up between them and Prince Andrew relating to his Pitch@Palace project.
The palace wasn’t involved in the fine details of a deal but wanted guarantees to make sure it wouldn’t impact the Royal Family in the future. Sky News understands from one source that the price being discussed for Pitch was around £750,000 – there are, however, reports that a deal may have stalled.
Photos we found on the Chinese Chamber of Commerce website show an event held in Asia between StartupBootcamp and Innovate Global, believed to be an offshoot of Pitch.
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Who is alleged Chinese spy, Yang Tengbo?
Documents, released in relation to the investigations into Mr Tengbo, have also shown how much the duke has always seen Pitch as a way of potentially making money. One document from 21 August 2021 clearly states “the duke needed money at the time, and saw the relationships with China through Pitch as one possible source of funding”.
But Prince Andrew’s apparent intention to use Pitch to make money has led to concerns about whether he is unfairly using the contacts and information he gained when he was a working royal.
Norman Baker, former MP and author of books on royal finances, believes it is “a crude attempt to enrich himself” and goes against what the tech entrepreneurs thought they were signing up for.
Read more:
Who is Yang Tenbo?
Virginia Giuffre says she has days to live
Emails between Andrew and Epstein revealed
He told Sky News: “The data given by these business people was given on the basis it was an official operation and not something for Prince Andrew, and so in my view, Prince Andrew had no right legally or morally to take the data which has been collected, a huge amount of data, and sell it…
“And quite clearly if you’re going to sell it off to StartupBootcamp, that is not what people had in mind. The entrepreneurs who joined Pitch@Palace did not do so to enrich Prince Andrew,” he said.
Rich Wilson was one tech entrepreneur who was approached at the start of Pitch@Palace to sign up, but he stepped away when he spotted a clause in the contract saying they’d be entitled to 2% equity in any funding he secured.
He feels Prince Andrew is continuing to use those he made a show of supporting.
He said: “It makes me feel sick. I think it’s terrible – that he is continuing to exploit unsuspecting tech founders in this way. A lot of them, I’m quite grey and old in the tooth now, I saw it coming, but clearly most didn’t. And a lot of them were quite young.
“It’ll be their first venture and you’re learning on the trot, so to speak. So to take advantage of people in such a major way – that’s an awful, sickening thing to do.”
We approached StartupBootcamp who said they had no comment to make, and the Duke of York’s office did not respond.
With reports that a deal may have stalled, it could be a big setback for the duke – especially with questions still about how he’ll continue to pay for his home on the Windsor estate now that the King no longer gives him financial support.
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