Leader: UK border controls are a disgrace
Tuesday 8th November 2011, 2:00PM GMT.
Barely 10 years after the 9/11 attacks ushered in a new age of global terrorism, Britain’s borders are revealed to be as leaky as a sieve.
The shambles of “relaxed” border controls at British ports this summer is a betrayal of those who died in the 2005 Tube bombings and all those brave British soldiers who have given their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan fighting to keep their homeland safe.
Whose fault is it? The head of the UK Borders Agency, Brodie Clark, has been suspended but Home Secretary Theresa May cannot avoid all blame.
The easing of controls, the total scrapping of biometric scrutiny and checks against the Home Office database happened on her watch.
If she did not know what was going on, she certainly should have known.
And yet for all the sound and fury in the Commons, we all know that this spat will fade and that the resumption of “normal” border controls will be little more than a sham.
For the truth is that all recent governments have talked big on immigration control and national security but have failed to deliver.
In the 13 years of New Labour, three million people arrived in Britain, the biggest influx of migrants for 1,000 years. Our population is set to hit 70 million in the next 16 years.
With such a massive change in population sanctioned by our political leaders, no-one can know for sure who among the new arrivals are coming with good intent and who have darker motives. The numbers are so vast that they would overwhelm any security system.
Men and women in uniform at our borders may create a sense of security.
But the “culture of complacency” revealed at UK ports in this latest scandal is an extension of the culture of apathy and impotence of successive governments.
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Thats cost cutting for you.
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Is there any sane person left who really believes that there hasn’t been a deliberate conspiracy by the three main parties to encourage immigration by all the means at their disposal?
Time and time again we are told about draconian new border controls being imposed, only to find out that in reality the existing systems are being bypassed, with the connivance of government ministers.
Has anyone got any idea what their real motive is for undermining their own policies in such a blatant manner?
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As I have said before ,we are the dumping ground for the world
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Rob, I guess it was a rhetorical question – but anyway, could the motive be lower wages by any chance?
Immigrants that undercut the wages of other workers in the job market can only benefit employers, but inevitably destroys the existing working family – Unemployment, wage deflation etc, has now reached the point where people can no longer afford to buy a house, but end up spending out on increasingly higher rents.
Lower wages mean tax returns are reduced which hardly helps the UK debt.
Of course, the immigration we are talking about only affects the job market of equal job status – ie the real workers.
You don’t hear of many immigrants coming to take city positions by under-cutting wages, so the big boys (friends of the politicians) have little to fear.
I’m not against immigration by the way, a lot of the wealth of this country has been built on it over the last few decades. However, there’s been an increasingly cynical exploitation of immigration and immigrants by politicians and employers. A “deliberate conspiracy”? – very possible.
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Government needs to sort their affairs out FAST! Sure our mp was oblivious, doesn’t seem to care unless it involves Libya and a book deal.
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‘Time and time again we are told about draconian new border controls being imposed…’
The thing is that border controls don’t appear to be that much of a factor in encouraging/discouraging immigration. If they were, there wouldn’t be such a clamour among Latin Americans to migrate to the USA (for example). People have been migrating for millenia, usually due to fairly straightforward economic push/pull factors.
The people these border controls really affect is the likes of you and me every time we try to get in or out of our own country. For the elderly, people with young children etc, they must be a pretty grim experience, hence the quiet relaxations at peak holiday times.
I also get the feeling the writer of this editorial has forgotten that the perpetrators of the 2005 tube bombings were UK citizens, not people who sneaked illegally into the country. If their actions could be put down to anything (beyond their own twisted ideology, of course), it would be failures of internal intelligence.
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“The thing is that border controls don’t appear to be that much of a factor in encouraging/discouraging immigration. If they were, there wouldn’t be such a clamour among Latin Americans to migrate to the USA (for example).”
Britain doesn’t have a land border except between Northern Ireland and Eire – a large proportion of the US/Mexican border is effectively uncontrolled – read more here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American-Mexican_border
Meanwhile, why do you think that Britain is the prime destination in the EU for non-EU immigrants?
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The push/pull factors I referred to – more specifically, the perception that the UK is a wealthy country which welcomes cheap labour – one where there are a lot of jobs the locals don’t seem to want.
The language factor – that English is the 2nd language for hundreds of millions – no doubt comes into it too.
I guess the ‘they’re only here for the benefits’ brigade will be along soon but they’ll be talking nonsense, as usual. People don’t leave home and family friends behind and endure arduous travelling conditions just to queue up in a dole office, they come to better themselves. And US benefits are hardly a pull for those Mexicans, are they?
Migration has been going on since man first existed. Today it is one of the inevitable consequences of globalisation. I’m not saying we shouldn’t try to control it, I am saying we should try to get beyond petty prejudices when debating it.
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I travel a lot on business and always dread coming back to the UK as it invariably means a wait of 10 – 20 minutes in a queue to gain entry to my own country, even though I have a biometric passport which, they once said, would allow me to wave it at a screen and pass through a security gate. In Gatwick recently, self-important officers in uniform made a point of ensuring that no-one could use the automatic system – large investment sitting idle whilst we were herded towards the booths.
If they actually made use of the biometric data in the passports, most people could clear through airports quickly using automatic gates and leave immigration to concentrate on non-Europeans, thus reducing queues and waiting time for both categories.
The fact is that the vastly expensive biometric project is unreliable and not up to the job. It’s added ££££ to the cost of a passport, but is of no use whatsoever when encountering the UK system, meaning that the only way to enable people through is to put everyone face to face with an immigration officer in a booth, which wastes time and cause frustration, especially for those of us who are British and returning home. Added to the inefficiencies of the system are the inefficiencies of the officers themselves.
Whenever government talks about cost savings, automation, ease of use and security (in return for a lot of taxpayers’ money), sinmply DO NOT BELIEVE THEM.
The new, unified “Border Agency” is a joke. All it seems to have done is put inefficient people into a single uniform and given them too much of a sense of self-importance.
Less prancing around asking stupid questions of British and EU entrants and more time dealing with non-European immigrant arrivals may ease the situation.
Let me also add, I want legal immigrants to be processed quickly as well. If they have a right to be here, let them pass controls easily and efficiently. When I go to China, I am an immigrant, but I get treated courteously and quickly, so I do feel embarrassment when I see huge queues of people at Heathrow, subjected to waits of up to 2 hours, just because they had the audacity to want to see Britain and spend money here as tourists.
Disgusting.
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It’s almost like nobody wants their face shown in the same picture as Theresa May nowadays. S’pose it’s a guilt by association thing.
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Theresa May said that she “Didn’t know what was going on”
Roughly translates as “How the hell do I get out of this one?”
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If she does not know what’s going on, she is obviously not in control of her office, and should be fired.
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Agreed Jeffrey, she should go. However, unlike you or I, who, if we failed in our jobs, would be shown the door end of, this woman would get a massive pay off, your money, for being a failure.
A job in politics is the way forward, succeed and be rewarded, fail, and be just as well rewarded.
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Seems something is going on, the demographic decline in western european populations projected over the next 50 years is beginning to loom, just a thought Rob ! Us baby boomers are on the way out so a hole may need filling.
not really one for conspiracy theories but you can’t trust the poiticos as far as you can throw them ( never really could :) )
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How hard can it be to police our borders properly. We are a island for heavens sake.
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please wake me up when theresa may of the nasty party resigns. blaming your staff is beneath contempt
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Hands up all those who actually thought that Cameron’s tories were going to be any better than Nu Labour?
Wake up and realise that Lib/Lab/Con are all the same.
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I agree! In the uk the border controls are too little too late. Who ya gonna blame? Prime Mininster!
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