Tough travel rules locking ex-offenders out of Britain also ‘locks out business’

Alicia Rasta is global sales director for an American company with clients around the world and an international base in the UK. For more than a decade, she has flown backwards and forwards between the US and London or Glasgow, where her firm Televerde has an office. Then last year she applied for an electronic travel authorisation (ETA), the Home Office’s new digital permission scheme. To her surprise the application was immediately rejected. She was told she was ineligible because she has a criminal record dating back more than a decade for a non-violent offence.

Rasta needed to come to Britain for her company’s annual sales conference so she applied for a visa. It cost her hundreds of dollars and she spent hours filling out paperwork and having fingerprints taken at the consulate. Her passport was held by the UK authorities for more than three months, meaning she could not take other business trips. Despite evidence from Televerde that Rasta’s presence at the Glasgow conference was “business critical”, she was again rejected. There was no right of appeal. She has not even bothered applying to come to Britain for this year’s meeting.

Rasta believes she and others like her have become “collateral damage” in the UK’s political battle over immigration to the detriment of businesses and the British economy.

Most visitors to the UK from countries including the US, Europe, Australia and Canada now need an ETA. The system, first created in 2023, was introduced for US citizens in November 2024. Applicants are automatically rejected if they have received a prison sentence of 12 months or more at any time in their lives. Home Office guidance also makes clear that visas “must be refused” to anyone sentenced to jail for at least a year. In March, the provisions were extended to suspended sentences.

In 2008, Rasta was jailed for falsifying prescriptions for OxyContin, having become addicted to the drug after a caesarean. She was released in 2014 and has since turned her life around yet she is banned from coming to the UK. “I’ve climbed the corporate ladder, but when I got that decline letter it took me all the way back to sitting behind those prison gates,” she says. “It’s like there’s a scar on my person that means I’m never going to be able to do what I want to in life.”

She believes the “short-sighted” Home Office approach will damage the UK economy, including tourism as well as businesses. “One out of every three Americans of all ages has an immediate family member who is or has been in prison. When you start taking numbers like that across the entire American population then restricting people because of their backgrounds, you’re carving off a huge chunk of people able to enter the country. If you can go to London or you can go to Paris and Paris isn’t going to have a problem with you, why wouldn’t you go to Paris?”

The personal and professional impact has been huge for Rasta. “I think that people need to be evaluated on different criteria. There’s so much more to a person than something you see on a dossier of their history,” she says.

Rasta’s experience is not an isolated case. Last year, 27,401 US citizens were either rejected or refused an ETA. The Home Office does not publish data on the reason for an application being turned down but there is a correlation with incarceration rates. Americans have been disproportionately affected because the US sends more people to prison than any other country. The US incarceration rate is 542 per 100,000 people, according to the World Prison Brief. In Germany the figure is 71 and in Norway it is 55. Last year, 7,085 Germans and 1,209 Norwegians were rejected or refused an ETA.

The entrepreneur Richard Branson is among the business leaders warning about the harm being done by the automatic ban on ex-offenders. “Building support for second chances relies on the lived experience of those who have rebuilt their lives after past mistakes,” the Virgin founder told The Observer. “Of course, governments have a duty to protect their citizens from harm. But blanket immigration restrictions for those who have spent time in prison just fuel stigma and undermine the idea of rehabilitation.”

The YO! Sushi founder Simon Woodroffe, who spent time in prison when he was 18, said his own story shows it is possible for people to turn their lives around. “I never broke the law [again] and went on to great things,” he said. 

He criticised the “heavy-handed set-in-stone-rule” stipulating that anyone who had served a 12-month sentence in the past should be banned. “My heart cries out ‘Be British, be fair, be flexible’. Set an example for the world to follow because they do take notice of us.”

The policy highlights inconsistencies across Whitehall. As justice secretary, Shabana Mahmood said it was “essential” that former prisoners were rewarded for making the right choices and urged businesses to hire more ex-offenders. Now the home secretary is presiding over a system that punishes former inmates for the rest of their lives.

Lena Patel, of the Responsible Business Initiative for Justice, which works with companies that hire ex-offenders, said the ETA rule was damaging to individuals and the country. “Not only is it likely hindering investment and spending in our economy, but it’s also sending the message that the UK places more value on people’s mistakes and missteps than on their ability to change and meaningfully contribute,” she said. “We need to adjust the new ETA policy to reflect that people are much more than their prison sentences, and that the UK is a place that welcomes their ideas, their investment, and their business.”

A Home Office spokesperson said: “The ETA scheme is a vital part of our work to strengthen the UK’s border security. Almost 25m ETAs have been granted since October 2023, with US nationals accounting for the highest numbers of grants. The criminality requirements for those who need a visa were introduced in 2020.”

Photograph by Patrick T Fallon/AFP/Getty Images