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• Students admitted after numerous refusals
• Checks in home countries inadequate
• "Colleges" complicit in scam

In an interview on ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio 5 Live's Donal MacIntyre programme this Sunday (1 November 2009) at 7.30pm, an immigration officer at Heathrow airport claims the rate of bogus or suspicious student entrants to the UK is worse than ever, despite Government claims of a far more selective and rigorous process with the introduction of a new points-based system in 2008.

According to the whistleblower, the number of non-EU students coming to the UK to study at questionable colleges is rocketing.

However, due to new administration procedures and the pressures of having so many new arrivals, immigration officials are told to give the benefit of the doubt even if they suspect the student is bogus as they do not have the resources to interrogate them.

The whistleblower says: "[In the past] you would probably have a 45-minute interview finding out how little they know about their actual course, showing that, one, they can't speak English properly; two, they don't know anything about the details of a course that they've been learning for four, five years at this stage. We would be able to refuse and remove the passenger. Now we cannot do this. We have an awful lot of students who have been refused five, six, even up to nine visas to come here to this country, whether it be for working holidays or student applications. And they're now coming here."

He goes on to claim that some of the entrants on student visas, when challenged, have no knowledge of the subjects they are supposedly studying. On one occasion a middle-aged Indian woman who couldn't speak English was permitted entry to supposedly study an accountancy course: "She was going to do an ACCA accounting course, of which when asked in Hindi what ACCA meant, she didn't have a clue. [She] wasn't even able to say in her own language what the course was going to entail."

Under the new points-based system overseas non-EU students require a university or other qualified UK educational institution to sponsor them, as well as having sufficient funds in their bank account to accrue points. The checks to gain visas are now done in the entrants' home countries leaving the immigration officer with very little power of action if they suspect the arrival to be bogus.

However, the whistleblower claims many of the colleges are bogus and the money in their accounts is just a loan to allow them entry to the UK, which is part of the package the entrant pays for to get a visa.

"All they had to do was get the letter from the so-called college – a lot of them being bogus – and put money in their bank account for a month out in their own country. We've got signatures from the passengers that they paid for their certificates, how much they paid for them and it's a constant theme."

Such is the backlog of students clogging up the arrivals area, the whistleblower claims that planes are asked to delay landing until the arrivals area is cleared.

"I'm not able to compare figures as we don't collate figures at the airport but just the sheer volume has taken us aback and on occasions we've had to shut the hall as we couldn't cope with the volume we've had. That has led to planes being backed up and requests made to back them up sufficiently to not allow them to proceed into Heathrow until we could clear what we've got."

The former Chief Executive of the British Accreditation Council, one of the Home Office recognised bodies which awards accreditation to private colleges, Dr Stephen Vickers, confirms the concern regarding bogus establishments, explaining how some colleges – which are basically fronts for migrants to come and work in the UK – would try to appear respectable when they were warned about an inspection.

Dr Vickers says: "I did see one whereby the college obviously had a large number of people who were being reported as being present as required at the college but in fact were off working. On learning they were to be inspected the college had sent out a message to the students that they needed to come in on the following Monday and to square it with their employers. It was so successful that they had far too many students milling around than they had classrooms to teach them in. It's also true that on occasions pre-rehearsed lessons or expert teachers would be brought in for one day."

If you use any material from this release please credit Donal MacIntyre, ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio 5 Live.

You can listen to 5 Live and 5 Live Sports Extra via DAB digital radio, Digital TV and online at bbc.co.uk/5live.

DL