Immigrants go home ...

pragmatic

Border forces catch lorry of immigrants trying to smuggle themselves out of Britain - Telegraph

                                                                        Border forces were shocked to discover a “very unusual” case of 28 illegal immigrants attempting to smuggle themselves out of Britain.

The immigrants, who Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Afghani and Sri Lankan nationals and included two children, hid aboard a Polish lorry on a P&O ferry bound for France.

They were found on Tuesday morning by officials in Calais, and after being deemed “undesirable” by the French authorities, they were shipped back to Britain by the evening.

Chris Laming, a spokesman for P&O, said that catching immigrants who are trying to leave Britain is “very rare”.                                Click to expand...       

More from the BBC too BBC News - The illegal immigrants desperate to escape squalor of Britain pure exploitation, sounds like something from New Mexico not West London.

While illegal immigrants shouldn't be here, those taking advantage of them, charging good money for a shared squalid shed or garage should be prosecuted and fined heavily.


Interestingly from the Telegraph, the French are annoyed at the lack of action by the British on our side of the border.

Trollslayer

The Borders Agency has half the staff they need.
MP's  solution is to blame them and shuffle the pawns about on the chessboard.

loz

Given the majority of illegal immigrants coming across the channel shouldn't be in the EU in the first place, wouldn't it be a lack of border guards in France, Italy, etc. that is the root cause of the UK's problem?

We are an island, a long, long way from the immigrants home county who have had to cross many borders to get here.  We shouldn't need a high number of boarder guards if other countries and the EU did there job.

Toko Black

Considering we are an island and can't stop them getting in, what hope have other EU nations that share large land borders ?

Other EU countries have illegal immigrant populations and problems - they aren't letting them through to us on purpose, since most EU countries don't know if immigrants are intended to travel to the UK, to another EU country or stay in theirs.

Italy and Greece have a higher percentage of illegal immigrants per their population that the UK.

loz

Then clearly as I said, those countries are not investing enough. They have the borders with non-EU countries.  The EU should be forcing them to do more about it, not us having to compensate.  Of all countries in the EU we should logically have the smallest immigration problem.

pragmatic

Funny way to spell Greece

Our whole border policy is a mess, while other EU countries may have more of a requirement based on the fact they have land borders with non EU countries and often require ID to be carried at all times have an easier time to identify and remove, we certainly need to do it better on our own end.  

For example why do they scan passports in airports but don't actually use the data anywhere useful?  Is it like a fake security camera, doesn't actually do anything, or is it just going to MI5/6 but not to any civilian database?

Trollslayer

True, people get through with stolen passports because countries don't support cross checking.

Toko Black

How much would be enough ?
Should other EU countries bankrupt themselves spending far more than any financial benefit from keeping them out ?
We spend billions in the war against drugs and can't stop it, we can't even keep them out of prisons.
Even in a completely totalitarian police state, crimes, smuggling(of people and products) and other illegal activities would continue to a lesser or greater extent.

The only realistic* way we have of solving the problem is to work on helping those countries achieve security, safety, basic human rights and a reasonable standard of living.

* I say realistically, but even then, the likely hood we will stop selling arms, doing deals with dictators and generally exploiting poor nations to support our own standards of living is a bit of a stretch.

loz

I don't disagree.

I disagree with the argument that we should employ more resources to compensate for others not doing so - or for any of us not taking the actions you describe.

fluxo

Or they entered vertically.