'They know Britain is a soft country': The visa overstayers living under the radar

Ramesh lives in fear every day. A police siren is enough to alarm him.

He's one of up to 400,000 visa overstayers in the UK, one lawyer we spoke to believes.

It's only an estimate because the Home Office has stopped collecting figures - which were unreliable in the first place.

Britain is being laughed at, another man told us, "because they know it's a soft country".

Read more: Why the UK doesn't have data on visa overstayers

We meet Ramesh (not his real name) at a Gurdwara, a Sikh place of worship, where he goes for food and support.

He insists he can't return to India where he claims he was involved in political activism.

Ramesh says he came to the UK on a student visa in 2023, but it was cancelled when he failed to continue his studies after being involved in a serious accident.

He tells us he is doing cash-in-hand work for people who he knows through the community where he is living and is currently working on a house extension where he gets paid as little as £50 for nine hours labouring.

"It's very difficult for me to live in the UK without my Indian or Pakistani community - also because there are a lot of Pakistani people who give me work in their houses for cleaning and for household things," he adds.

'What will become of people like us?'

Anike has lived in limbo for 12 years.

Now living in Greater Manchester, she came to the UK from Nigeria when her sister Esther was diagnosed with a brain tumour - she had a multi-entry visa but was supposed to leave after three months.

Esther had serious complications from brain surgery and says she is reliant on her sister for care.

Immigration officials are in touch with Anike because she has to digitally sign in every month.

She has had seven failed applications for leave to remain on compassionate grounds refused but is now desperate to have her status settled - afraid of the shifting public mood over migration.

"Everybody is thinking 'what will become of people like us?'" she adds.

'It's a shambles'

The government can't say with any degree of accuracy how many visa overstayers there are in Britain - no data has been collated for five-and-a-half years.

But piecing together multiple accounts from community leaders and lawyers the picture we've built is stark.

Immigration lawyer Harjap Singh Bhangal told us he believed there could be several hundred thousand visa overstayers currently in Britain.

He says: "At this time, there's definitely in excess of about 200,000 people overstaying in the UK. It might even be closer to 300,000, it could even be 400,000."

Asked what evidence he has for this he replies: "Every day I see at least one overstayer, any immigration lawyers like me see overstayers and that is the bulk of the work for immigration lawyers.

"The Home Office doesn't have any accurate data because we don't have exit controls. It's a shambles. It's an institution where every wall in the building is cracked."

The number of those who are overstaying visas and working cash in hand is also virtually impossible to measure.

'They know Britain is a soft country'

"They're laughing at us because they know Britain is a soft country, where you won't be picked up easily," says the local man we've arranged to meet as part of our investigation.

We're in Kingsbury in northwest London - an area which people say has been transformed over the past five years as post-Brexit visa opportunities opened up for people coming from South Asia.

'Mini-Mumbai'

The man we're talking to, who is British Indian, lives in the community and helps with events here. He doesn't want to be identified but raises serious questions about visa abuse.

"Since the last five years, a huge amount of people have come in this country on this visiting visa, and they come with one thing in mind - to overstay and work in cash," he says.

"This area is easy to live in because they know they can survive. It looks like as if you are walking through mini-Mumbai."

'It's taxpayers who are paying'

And he claims economic migrants are regularly arriving - who've paid strangers to pretend they're a friend or relative in order to obtain a visitor visa to get to Britain.

He says: "I've come across so many people who have come this way into this country. It's widespread. When I talk to these people, they literally tell me, 'Oh, someone is coming tomorrow, day after tomorrow, someone is coming'."

Because they're hidden they may not be claiming benefits, but they can access emergency healthcare and their children can go to school.

"And who is paying for it? It's the taxpayers who are paying for all this," says the man we've met in north London.

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A Home Office spokesperson said: "We will not tolerate any abuse of our immigration system and anyone found to be breaking the rules will be liable to have enforcement action taken against them.

"In the first year of this government, we have returned 35,000 people with no right to be here - a 13% rise compared to the previous year.

"Arrests and raids for illegal working have soared to their highest levels since records began, up 63% and 51%."

(c) Sky News 2025: 'They know Britain is a soft country': The visa overstayers living under the radar