Immigration officials don't have a clue on numbers or whereabouts of illegal immigrants

Immigration officials don't have a clue on numbers or whereabouts of illegal immigrants

	Published : Wed, 17 May 2006 09:05 By : Richard Owen Print this Story

LONDON - A high-ranking immigration official has admitted that he had no clue as to how many illegal immigrants have made Britain their home or indeed where they were. These revelations by David Roberts, of the Immigration and Nationality Directorate (IND) have shocked MPs who have reacted by saying that such irresponsible statements from IND officials "beggared belief" and showed "deliberate negligence".

Mr Roberts also told MPs that there was no point in trying to "hunt down" these immigrants, but instead focusing on their employers would help officials control their numbers. He added that he was aware of the fact that the Home Office estimates put the number of illegals at 400,000. "In terms of the number of letters sent to people who have been refused permission to stay here, I simply wasn't able to get that information," he told the Commons home affairs committee. Roberts also said that the IND was mounting raids on firms employing these illegals.

"We are making huge efforts to remove them, but not on the basis of tracing individuals," he said. "There was a time, quite a few years ago, when I was an immigration officer, when indeed we knocked on lots of doors, following up lots of individual cases. And it came as no surprise that none of those individuals were at the addresses we had for them."

He said that a modern approach would be to target such individuals through their work rather than hunt them down. Any exception to this rule would only be instituted if any individual posed a "risk to national security." Committee chairman John Denham was obviously shocked with this attitude, "I get the impression the correct answer for me to give would be 'not very much, they don't track individuals. I wouldn't worry about it'," he said.

Replying to this Mr Roberts maintained that tracing illegals through their workplace was a highly efficient approach, "If the committee concludes that we should be tracking individuals as part of its inquiry then that presents a series of challenges to us, to act on that recommendation in relation to the internal controls we have in the UK," he added.

Shadow Home Secretary, David Davis reacted to these staggering revelations by saying that the whole process reeked of deliberate negligence on the part of the Home Office, "It beggars belief that along with our porous borders, problems with foreign criminals and our inability to deport a quarter of a million failed asylum seekers we also manage to hand out National Insurance numbers without checking up on a person's immigration status," he said.