If anything it could help legal immigration. There's a bootstrapping issue where you need a utility bill to open a bank account and a bank account to get paid and get paid to pay the utility bill. And also need all 3 to rent a property to live in. You can choose the right providers to work around that with just your passport, but that involves a bit of work and research.

No idea how that would solve anything illegal though and realistically, I don't think they do either.

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monerozcash 10 hours ago | parent [-]

Presumably most legal immigrants already have bank accounts overseas and do not suffer from this bootstrapping issue.

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viraptor 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Most companies will not pay a local employee to an international amount. You're also going to pay quite large fees for any transfers if you wanted to pay bills. Also, the account abroad is not a proof of address in the UK which is the thing you want from statements.

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piperswe 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Good luck paying rent/utilities in the UK, or proving a UK address, with a foreign (especially non-SEPA) bank account

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cdsghh 9 hours ago | parent [-]

I have been doing so for years, never had a problem.

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viraptor 7 hours ago | parent [-]

You have not been proving your UK address with your account abroad. You may have used it for other purposes, but not that.

	▲	cdsghh 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I have done that once too, just changed the account address to my UK address and printed a PDF statement. No problem whatsoever. But anyway, you can just get utilies and pay with foreign account. This gets you an utility bill.

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tpm 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Long time ago when I came to the UK I had that exact problem, there was only one bank (HSBC I think) that agreed to open an account for based on passport only. Even though I'm an EU citizen and UK was part of the EU at that time. Otherwise I would be stuck, because my employer (no employer I know of) would send my wage overseas.