Britain’s immigration shambles is rapidly getting worse as staff fail to cope with a huge backlog of asylum claims.
A damning report by MPs reveals today that the pile of applications has grown by an alarming 70 per cent in a year.
Officials
have lost track of 50,000 illegal immigrants and failed to kick out
another 175,000, and the situation has worsened despite Home Secretary
Theresa May’s attempts to tackle the crisis. Now there are calls for
‘urgent steps’ to sort out the ‘mess’.
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Mayor of
Calais Natacha Bouchart, the mayor of Calais (left), said Britain's
generous handouts make it an 'El Dorado' for migrants, while Commons
Public Accounts Committee chairman Margaret Hodge (right) has called
for for 'urgent steps' to sort out the 'mess'
The
pressure grew further on Mrs May last night as the mayor of Calais said
Britain’s generous handouts make it an ‘El Dorado’ for migrants and
Tory minister Nick Boles admitted the UK will never be able to control
its borders while a member of the EU.
Mrs
May axed the discredited UK Border Agency following a series of
immigration scandals and brought it under the direct control of the Home
Office. But the logjam of asylum claims has since rocketed, the Commons
Public Accounts Committee says today.
In
the first three months of this year, 16,273 asylum seekers were still
waiting for a first decision, a sharp increase on the 9,559 for the same
period in 2013. Last year, MPs warned that slack checks by
under-pressure officials could allow terror suspects and criminals to
slip through the net into Britain.
Theresa May axed the UK Border Agency
following a series of immigration scandals, bringing it under the direct
control of the Home Office
A camp close to the ferry port in
Calais, where migrants mainly from Afghanistan, Sudan, Iran and Eritrea
try to arrive to Britain by getting on trucks heading to Britain through
the Channel Tunnel
Muslim immigrants living in makeshift tents in a wooded area close to Calais ferry port
PAC
chairman Margaret Hodge said ministers have had to write off a
‘gobsmackingly awful’ £1billion of taxpayers’ money on IT projects
intended to make it easier to keep tabs on foreigners entering and
leaving Britain.
‘The Home Office must take urgent steps to sort out this immigration mess,’ she said.
The
PAC report also revealed that a ‘worrying’ 29,000 asylum applications
dating back seven years have still not been resolved, with 11,000 not
even receiving an initial decision – a figure denied by the Home Office.
The
beleaguered department has also lost track of at least 50,000 illegal
immigrants who were refused permission to stay and is still to remove
another 175,000, it says.
Border chiefs have been blasted for
'catastrophic' failures over a £500,000 scam that allowed more than 175
Pakistani workers and their relatives to illegally enter Britain
Reverend
Nathan Ntege, 55, walked free from court (left) when claims he conducted
nearly 500 sham marriages were dropped after a judge accused
investigators of lying under oath
The
report follows Daily Mail revelations of a string of blunders by
immigration officials. Yesterday it was revealed that border chiefs had
been criticised by a judge for ‘catastrophic’ failures over a £500,000
scam that allowed more than 175 Pakistani workers and their relatives to
enter Britain illegally between 2009 and 2012.
The
judge said it was a scandal that the UK Border Agency handed out work
permits to Techsense UK, a company which even its own inspector warned
was a front for an immigration racket. Instead of securing
£40,000-a-year IT jobs, many of those who travelled to the UK ended up
in fast food restaurants and stacking supermarket shelves.
Tory minister Nick Boles (pictured) has admitted that the UK will never be able to control its borders while a member of the EU
Last
week a vicar suspected of running Britain’s biggest sham marriage
racket walked free after his £1million trial collapsed as a result of
‘serious misconduct’ by the UKBA.
And
a report by John Vine, the chief inspector of Borders and Immigration,
revealed thousands of illegal immigrants were escaping removal because
of chaos in the system. Home Office officials were routinely ignoring
intelligence tip-offs from the public and the police, and wrongly
dismissing valuable information as unimportant.
The Government insisted it is still trying to clear up the mess left by the Labour’s ‘dysfunctional’ open-door policy.
But
the report by Mrs Hodge’s committee is a blow to Mrs May, who axed the
Border Agency in March 2013, with asylum cases now handled by UK Visas
and Immigration at the Home Office. The committee found the department
is struggling to process the rise in new claims, many from war-torn
countries such as Syria.
It
blamed the logjam on the ‘botched’ decision by UKBA to demote staff
that led to 120 experienced officials leaving – piling pressure on
others. The cancelling of two flawed IT projects hit the ability to
track people through the immigration system, it said. The Home Office
squandered £347million on a project in 2010 to make it easier for
officials to deal with asylum, visa and residency applications. And the
failed eBorders programme, which would have introduced exit checks, cost
the taxpayer more than £500million.
Immigration
minister James Brokenshire insisted: ‘The immigration system we
inherited was totally dysfunctional. Turning around years of
mismanagement has taken time, but it is now well underway and we are
addressing the backlogs we inherited.’
But Dia Chakravarty, political director of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said the department appears to be making problems worse.
‘These
delays not only have a human cost [but] are costing taxpayers too,’ she
said. ‘The Home Office must make addressing this fiasco a priority.’
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