It also sought cooperation from the Indian community to make the new ‘points-based’ immigration system “fair and stable”.

“About 1,000 case workers are currently engaged in making decisions case by case,” Immigration Minister Liam Byrne said at a seminar on immigration organised by the Ethnic Minority Citizens Forum here on Friday.

“The current visa system needs an overhauling as it is clumsy, outdated and wretched,” Byrne said.

The points-based system, which has been criticised as discriminatory, will allow non-European migrants into UK only if they can prove that there is shortage of their skills in the UK.

Byrne said he will publish a blueprint of the new immigration system in a month’s time. But he rejected a proposal for a cap on immigration. “There are about 10,000 students in UK contributing 8.3 billion pounds student fee annually. So how can we put a cap on them?” Byrne asked.

Meanwhile, he said the British government was currently removing foreign nationals from prisons and about 4,000 were sent back home last year.