[guide.chat] 150,000 immigrants refuse to leave britain
- From: vanessa <qwerty1234567a@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: "GUIDE CHAT" <guide.chat@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 5 Jul 2012 08:48:48 +0100
UK Border Agency failing to deal with 150,000 illegal migrants, says watchdog
At least 150,000 migrants refused leave to remain in Britain could be living in
the country illegally and there are no detailed plans to remove them, an
official watchdog has warned.
Border officials are failing to ensure migrants leave Britain if they have been
refused leave to remain. Photo: PA
By Martin Beckford, Home Affairs Editor
6:30AM BST 05 Jul 2012
Independent inspectors said the "significant backlog" of those refused further
leave to remain is a "national problem".
Border officials were unaware of how many over-stayers they were supposed to be
tracking down, and as many as four out of 10 had not even been told their time
was up.
John Vine, the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration, said:
"We did find that there are over 150,000 cases nationally of migrants who have
been refused an extension of stay in the UK.
"The Agency does not know how many of these individuals have left the country
or who are waiting to be removed. I also saw no evidence that there is a clear
plan in place for the Agency to deal with this stream of work to ensure this
does not become another backlog."
The UK Border Agency was set up in the wake of the 2006 scandal in which it
emerged that more than 1,000 foreign prisoners had been released back on the
streets without being deported.
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Last year inspectors discovered that more than 500,000 people had been waved
into Britain after vital passport checks were relaxed, in a row that led to the
resignation of senior border official Brodie Clark.
In the latest report, the watchdog looked at the performance of local
immigration officers in Hampshire and concluded that they were meeting targets
in removing failed asylum seekers and the most dangerous illegal immigrants.
But the report made public for the first time the scale of something called the
Migration Refusal Pool - a list of cases where workers or students have been
refused leave to remain in the country after their original visas expired. They
are meant to leave within 28 days but can apply for leave in another category
or appeal against the decision.
Inspectors found that in Hampshire, staff gave "contradictory" information
about how many over-stayers they were responsible for, and were "unsure" of how
many were still in the country. Officials were meant to be looking for three
times as many illegal migrants as they thought.
About 40 per cent of the individuals had not even been served with forms
telling them to leave the country and staff did not think there were any
targets to deal with the backlog.
In one case, someone whose visitor visa ran out in April 2007 waited more than
two years to apply to stay indefinitely, and when their application was refused
a year later the Border Agency waited another six months before trying to make
them leave. Another six months later the applicant's solicitor complained about
their treatment but no action was taken until December 2011.
Inspectors studied 44 files and found that in 20 cases the migrants had
voluntarily left Britain and one had been forced out, but the other 23 were
still in the country with four having gone missing.
The report questioned why absconders were "not a high priority" for the border
officials with only two-thirds being marked as wanted on police files.
Overall the inspectors found there were 153,821 people in the Migrant Refusal
Pool in October last year, rising to 159,313 by December. The Home Office
refused to say how big the database was when it was set up in December 2008.
"This issue is a national problem," the report said. "We believe the Agency
needs to be much more pro-active in providing a clear strategic direction for
its staff to follow in dealing with the MRP cases. This should stop the already
significant backlog from increasing and ensure that steps are taken to reduce
it over time."
The Immigration Minister, Damian Green, said: "Under the last Government there
was no effective strategy in place to ensure migrants left at the end of their
time in the UK.
"The UK Border Agency is now working through a group of potential overstayers
to identify those who have not left. This includes checking passenger records
using our e-borders database which now covers all flights outside Europe.
"This summer the UKBA launched a UK-wide operation to remove overstayers and we
have already seen 1,800 removals since the campaign started."
But Sir Andrew Green, chairman of Migration Watch UK, said: "The ability to
remove those who have no right to be in Britain is fundamental to the
credibility of the whole immigration system.
"This report shows that much clearer focus and probably more resources are
needed if removal is to be a serious deterrent.
"Illegal immigrants cause considerable harm by undercutting the wages of
British workers. How else would they get their jobs?"
Keith Vaz, chairman of the Home Affairs Select Committee, said: "I am
astonished that the UKBA has no idea where 159,000 individuals, the size of a
city like Oxford, have gone since their application was rejected. This is yet
another group of cases we did not know about.
"As the Committee have said time and time again, the UKBA should spend more
time locating illegal immigrants rather than targeting genuine migrants like
students, spouses and family visitors."
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