One sunny morning this summer, some of my officers assisted the UK Border Agency executing a warrant at a local business premise. The result is that five Pakistani men were arrested. Each of the five had entered this country on six month visas allegedly to visit relatives whilst on holiday. All five had stayed in this country for between two and five years and were living and working here. They were brought to the local police station where they were interviewed . It was established that they had all overstayed their visas and were working in this country illegally. They were then removed to an immigration detention centre.
You may be forgiven for assuming that all five would be put on a plane back to Pakistan within days. I assumed that is what happened, but I bumped into one of the Border Agency officers and got an update. At the detention centre all five applied for leave to remain in the UK and appealed against their deportation. One was given leave to remain, the other four were released and told to report to their local police station daily until their appeal was heard. The four disappeared and have have not been seen nor heard of since.
More recently I spent two days at an international airport working with the UK Border Agency. I could not believe what I was seeing and hearing. We have people arriving in this country every day who are obviously intending to stay or work. We interview them. They lie. They are evasive. But nine times out of ten we let them in anyway as we cannot prove what we believe. Occasionally we refuse them entry and sometimes they demand asylum. Sometimes they appeal against refusal of entry and we just let them in anyway because the appeal process is expensive and loaded in favour of the immigrant.
I am not against all immigration. Our transport system, our health service and, more recently our service industry have been saved by immigration. It is just a shame that we have more than one million unemployed who do not have the social skills, or any other skills, to fill these gaps.
Currently, for every illegal immigrant the UK Border Force detain only one in three is actually deported. The rest are given asylum or permission to remain or just disappear into the black economy.
If we are going to get tough on immigration we need a very simple system. If we think you might be bogus you go back from whence you came. No appeal, and no asylum, unless you are from a country on a list with serious human rights issues. If you overstay your welcome, you are on the next flight home. No appeal, no discussion. The current system is a complete joke and is being abused and capitalized upon.
