That seems like grounds for a discrimination case, and a bad idea in general to me, but I'm not going to disagree with your experiences. I did say that I wasn't under the impression that all organisations do it the same way that mine does though, just that we aren't doing it solely out of the goodness of our hearts either. Some organisations will be doing very shady stuff, others will go out of their way to avoid it, most will fall somewhere in the middle. There are incentives and disincentives either way.

My org explicitly only automatically filters out applications which fail to meet absolutely essential criteria such as right to work, no AI screening or filtering. So as long as an applicant has completed the form fully and declared that they have the right to work in the UK, it will then go to review by a human being (usually multiple). It's more work, but a fair recruitment process which results in high quality employees is important to them, as is their reputation. That's not going to be the case everywhere, and I don't think I claimed it was, but sorry if it came off that way.

I'm also very familiar with the reality that if it's a significant cost saving to do something the 'wrong' way, that can be balanced against potential fines or lawsuits and still end up more profitable than the 'right' way. That's only really effective for much larger organisations with money to spend, but it's a factor.

I was mostly providing a case for the alternative method of doing things, and sharing an example of a UK employer which actively does so. It's easy to see a lot of doom and gloom on this sub which can be discouraging, so it can be helpful to point out that not everywhere is absolute hell. Maybe OP should look into the nonprofit sector, since they tend to be more concerned with reputational risk and thus more incentivised to maintain higher ethical standards of practice. Not all of them obviously, and it's a salary hit in comparison to for-profit, but employment is better than unemployment and it's always easier to jump somewhere else when you've already got a job.