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<p>We have recently legislated in the Immigration Act 2014 to make it harder for illegal
migrants to remain in the country undetected and to encourage people to leave of their
own accord. The provisions include implementing a penalty for those landlords who
rent property to immigrants without leave in the UK, denying free access to most secondary
healthcare in the UK to illegal immigrants, requiring banks to check against a database
of known immigration offenders before opening accounts, introducing new powers to
check the immigration status of applicants before issuing a driving licence and revoking
the driving licences of those migrants who have overstayed, and introducing new powers
to clamp down <br>on those trying to gain immigration advantage by entering into a
sham marriage or civil partnership. <br><br>We have also used the Immigration Act
to streamline the process of enforcing the removal of illegal migrants when necessary.
We have reduced the number of appeal rights from 17 to 4, and set out clearly in primary
legislation the right balance on Article 8 rights, to prevent individuals from playing
the system. We have also streamlined the process of serving immigration decisions
to reduce bureaucracy and further accelerate the system.<br><br>We also introduced
on 1 January 2014 new regulations allowing us to prevent the re-entry to the UK for
up to 12 months of EEA nationals who are<br>removed for failing to exercise treaty
rights, unless they have a valid reason to be here. <br><br>These measures support
and enhance our immigration enforcement capability, with teams operating on a targeted,
risk-based approach across the country to detect and remove illegal migrants. This
effort has also been given fresh impetus with the break-up of the UK Border Agency
and the creation of a focused Immigration Enforcement operational command.</p><p>
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