Family visa sponsors face ID, credit and CRB checks
People who sponsor visits to the UK by relatives from overseas under new visa rules will be required to undergo Criminal Records Bureau checks, and will be liable for penalties of up to £5,000 or even a prison sentence if the relative goes AWOL, immigration minister Liam Byrne announced this week. <snip> Before accepting a sponsor we will make thorough checks as to who they are, including financial, criminal record and immigration checks ... and we will link the issue of sponsor licences with the roll-out of national identity cards for British citizens and ID cards for foreign nationals." <snip> According to Office of National Statistics data (Travel Trends 2006), in 2006 somewhere in the region of 8 million people gave visiting family or friends as their reason for travelling to the UK. Of these, 5 million were from the EU, and around half of the remainder from the US, which would indicate anything up to 1.5 million might be eligible for sponsorship, more if a proportion of those declaring "holiday" as their primary purpose of visit are also visiting family. <snip> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/06/26/visa_sponsor_rules/ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ So a citizen will need a national ID card to sponsor a visa to allow their foreign relatives to visit the UK. And you will also have to submit to the ID card scheme to get or renew your passport or driving license. However, the government still insists that the scheme will be voluntary until 2012!

David Davis will soon be back ... and my completely amateur prognostification is that he will be back at the centre of things, too. They will keep their pledges. Be mad not to! :wink: