Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what steps her Department takes to determine the nationality of irregular migrants who do not have documentation.

A range of methods are used to determine the nationality of such individuals, including checking the person’s claimed biographic details and biometrics against immigration databases (including records of previous immigration and visa applications), police records, and in some cases international partners.

Where appropriate, the Home Office may also use language analysis testing, in which a person’s speech is examined by experts to determine their likely linguistic origin, which can help determine nationality where it is unclear.