HUGE news. From this Friday, the Home Office's racist visa algorithm is no more! 💃🎉 Thanks to our lawsuit (with @JCWI_UK) against this shadowy, computer-driven system for sifting visa applications, the Home Office have agreed to “discontinue the use of the Streaming Tool”.
Read the full letter the Home Office lawyers sent to us last night, here: foxglove.org.uk/news/home-offi…
This matters because racism and bias in the visa system inflicts untold misery and tears families apart, and excludes talented people from contributing to the UK. The visa algorithm was a key tool in this system, delivering computer-aided “speedy boarding for white people”.
It also matters because this is the first time a government algorithm has been taken to court in the UK. The bias, discrimination, and distorting “feedback loops” we identified here are also a risk with other government algorithms – more scrutiny is urgently needed.
Sadly, scrapping the visa algorithm will not, on its own, mean an end to racism and bias in the visa system. The government has announced a “redesign of the process”. There will now be a battle to make sure that the new process is better than the awful one it replaces.
All just shows the importance of independent orgs like JCWI and Foxglove holding the govt to account. If we hadn’t brought this challenge, more people would be hurt by the visa algorithm. This judicial review forced the government to obey the law. 💪
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