http://www.telegraph.co.uk:80/et?ac=000154642417163&rtmo=awsebNNL&atmo=99999999&pg=/et/99/8/8/nimm08.html

ISSUE 1535 Sunday 8 August 1999

Immigrants face backlog shambles By David Bamber, Home Affairs Correspondent

BRITAIN'S immigration and asylum system is on the brink of collapse. New figures show that the backlog of cases has more than doubled in six months.

Home Office statistics obtained by The Telegraph show that in January there were 63,622 immigration and asylum cases. By June it had increased to 145,991 despite a pledge by ministers to solve problems at the Immigration and Nationality Directorate (IND). Currently there are 80,935 cases which were first received more than a year ago and still have not been processed.

David Lidington, the shadow Home Office minister, said last night: "Jack Straw is responsible for presiding over the breakdown of our immigration service. It is a scandal." The IND is also answering far fewer calls from the public who made 60,000 attempts in January. Only 2,109 were answered. By June this had dropped to 1,707.

The situation worsened because more than 470 staff have resigned in the past 18 months resulting in queues stretching for hundreds of yards outside the directorate's headquarters at Lunar House in Croydon, south London. A Home Office spokesman said problems with new computers and reorganisation had caused many problems, but things were improving.

[True, this article does not say that a Y2K glitch caused the problems. However, in view of recent similar problems with the passport office, which WERE attributed to Y2K problems, I am including this item in Y2K-connected glitches. It is a safe bet that the new computers replaed non-Y2K compliant machines.]

-- Old Git (anon@spamproblems.com), August 07, 1999

Answers

The y2k glich in the UK ruined my vacation... what a shambles it was over there - shades of things to come...

I had intended to go to the UK then France and Belgium BUT it took me two weeks to get a new passport to let me go to F and B by which time - time had run out (sniff)

Bloody computers!

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), August 08, 1999.