Nigerian Samuel Shoyeju, an immigration officer, has been jailed for seven years for falsely granting indefinite leave to remain to 44 non-EU residents who were not entitled to stay in the country.
Only 14 of the false letters that he issued have been recovered, meaning most of the recipients have not been identified.
Judge Christopher Mitchell said the case threatened to undermine the hard-won reputation for "probity and honesty" of British civil servants.
He added: "Actions like yours call into question in the public mind the entire integrity of the immigration system when, at the present time, immigration and immigration decisions are extremely sensitive."
Basildon Crown Court heard the "treasured status" allowed immigrants to live, work and claim benefits as well as applying for full British citizenship.
The recipients, who are all believed to be Nigerian, ranged from asylum seekers to those who had already identified as "overstayers".
Prosecutor Lucy Kennedy said: "Not all of those people have been traced."
She added: "This case has cost the taxpayer a significant amount of money, both in terms of the investigation and in terms of those who remain in the country untraced.
"He abused the system he was employed to protect and he did so for his own selfish reasons, not out of some misguided sense of altruism.
"It was a breach of trust which will no doubt undermine confidence in public servants employed to protect UK borders."
Shoyeju, who worked as a line manager in Croydon, amended and destroyed electronic and paper records to cover his tracks.
He used colleagues' date stamps and accessed secure databases under other people's names to divert attention away from himself.
When his home computer was searched a file called "Nigerian names" was found, relating to those he planned to grant visas to.
He was able to use a generic computer log-in to transfer secure files from Home Office systems without being identified, Ms Kennedy said.
"That system relies on the integrity of immigration officials themselves," Ms Kennedy added.
"He had been employed to uphold immigration rules but, using his intricate inside knowledge of the system, he deliberately did the opposite."
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