UK gov’t gives eVisa update, digital ID debate rages on

The United Kingdom Home Office has announced an update in its move towards a new digital immigration system. By July 15, foreign nationals applying for a work or study visa must use an online account to access their eVisas. This update comes as discussions heat up around the possibility of a mandatory U.K. digital ID to help combat illegal immigration.

The eVisa

The U.K. is phasing out physical immigration documents, with the so-called “eVisa” set to replace current physical equivalents, aiming to “fully digitalize its immigration system.”

As of December 31, 2024, physical immigration documents such as Biometric Residence Cards, Biometric Residence Permits, passport endorsements, and physical “vignette” visa stickers—a sticker placed in a person’s passport following a successful entry clearance application that provides proof of their immigration status—were no longer issued.

Instead, starting in 2025, the immigration status of all persons will be recorded electronically. It will be accessible through an online ‘United Kingdom Visas and Immigration (UKVI)’ account, linked to the individual’s travel document.

As of a recent update from the U.K. government, foreign nationals will no longer get a vignette if they apply for a work or study visa on or after July 15, 2025. Instead, applicants will need to use their UKVI account to access their eVisa.

However, foreign nationals will still be given a vignette if they apply as a dependant for any visa or as a main applicant for visas other than work or study.

According to the government, the benefits of an eVisa include that they are “secure and cannot be lost, stolen or tampered with, unlike a physical document” and that “it will be quicker and easier to prove your status at the UK border, and share your status with third parties like employers and landlords.”

Another noted benefit was that applicants will no longer need to wait for, or collect, a physical document after the application is decided.

In December 2024, Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Migration and Citizenship at the Home Office Seema Malhotra said that over 6 million people had been given eVisas without having to specifically register, and many have been successfully using them for several years.

However, in May, the government warned that an estimated 300,000 remaining people still need to create a UKVI account, or they will not have access to an eVisa.

The eVisa scheme is part of a five-year digitization program, announced back in 2021, for the U.K.’s post-Brexit immigration system, and also falls within a broader attempt to modernize and digitize U.K. government.

Another mooted and hotly debated plan that falls within this digitization aspiration is the more controversial introduction of a new form of mandatory digital ID for U.K. residents.

The UK’s ID struggle

The Labour Together paper made the case for introducing a mandatory national digital identity that would be issued free of charge to all those with the right to live or work in the U.K. The BritCard would be a verifiable digital credential downloaded onto a user’s smartphone, which could be instantly checked by employers or landlords, for example, using a free verifier app.

The paper suggested that the BritCard would also “support better enforcement of migration rules, and protect vulnerable British citizens from being wrongly denied their rights.”

It added that the proposed digital ID could “end identity exclusion, resolving uncertainty and risk for those whose status is uncertain, and providing a quick, secure, privacy-preserving means for everyone to verify their identity and their migration status when dealing with government, when taking up a new job, or taking on property.”

Despite most of the European Union having some form of ID card, the U.K. public has been notoriously reticent about adopting any such form of identification.

When a previous Labour government, under former Prime Minister Tony Blair, introduced an Identity Card bill in 2005, it met with initial success in Parliament, and after passing into law, around 15,000 ID cards were issued between October 2009 and May 2010.

However, after several public surveys and consultations, it became clear that most U.K. public and stakeholders’ were against the new IDs, leading to a change of heart from lawmakers.

By the time the Identity Card Bill was repealed in 2010, by the then Conservative home secretary Teresa May, the Home Office stated that £257 million ($346 million) had been spent—or wasted—on implementing the doomed ID cards.

Now, a new form of digital ID card appears to be back in vogue with policymakers, and some are testing the water of public opinion to see if there has been a shift since the last ID card was rejected.

In a July 10 interview with BBC Newsnight, the former head of MI6, Alex Younger, said it was “absolutely obvious to me that people should have a digital identity.”

He went on to claim that the absence of ID cards was contributing to issues around undocumented migrants in the U.K.

The following day, former Labour minister and current Baroness in the House of Lords, Harriet Harman, told Sky News that one of the U.K.’s “pull factors” is that people arriving on small boats can easily work illegally.

She added that having digital ID cards would “make it even more difficult for people to work illegally” and that “there are things that the government has to do that people want them to do, which digital ID will enable them to do.”

However, Harman did also acknowledge the controversy around the IDs, saying that her view on ID cards may be seen as “politically incorrect” but that “with the digital situation, and people have so much digital ID – I mean, it depends on whether or not you think the state is going to actually overstep the mark and oppress people.”

Whether or not the U.K. does eventually try again for a new form of national ID, the various noises—including the likes of Labour Together, Younger, and Harmon—appear to be signaling that it would almost certainly take the form of a digital ID, rather than a physical one.

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