This short post reacts to the news today that banks and building societies are being enlisted by the British Government to check the immigration status of millions of people and take the appropriate action – essentially putting banks on the front-line in the push to reduce the levels of people living in this country without the appropriate leave to do so. The obvious question to be raised by this move is whether the banking system is the appropriate vehicle to meet this objective, and what may be the connotations for it doing so. It was declared in the Autumn ( via the Immigration Act 2016 ) that banks and building societies would be given a list by the anti-fraud organisation Cifas that contained the details of people who are officially liable to be removed or deported from the U.K., or who have absconded from immigration control , with the Home Office stating that the new system would be ‘ fair but firm ’. The design of the new system would be that banks (and building societie...