 continues to fuel community tensions across the country and places ever increasing pressures on the UK Home Office, as well as the revolving door of political leaders that preside over it. Having served there for over 40 years, at all levels from immigration officer to Director General, I feel their pain. Border Force and Immigration Enforcement Officers are having to confront a growing tide of undocumented immigrants, who themselves are becoming increasingly difficult to manage. A day rarely goes by without our officers being assaulted either at Western Jetfoil or at Manston; and tensions continue to rise at both locations under the sheer weight of numbers and our inability to move them on to safe and secure long-term accommodation, or to return them swiftly whence they came. Many distinguished commentators – not least David Neal, the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration – have openly described the new processing centre at Manston as hopelessly unfit for purpose. Moreover, hotels across the UK are filling up with migrants, at a huge cost to the UK taxpayer, with the asylum backlog already standing at over 100,000. Many local authorities across the country are refusing to accept more migrants into their communities as they are already struggling to deliver housing and social services to their indigenous population. Of course, there has always been a huge pressure to emigrate to the UK. Despite the weather, it is a destination country of choice for a great many people from across the globe. In order to control numbers, successive governments have introduced systems to (a) ensure that only those migrants who are entitled to come get here in the first place; and (b) those that do make it without securing prior permission are processed swiftly and (if found to have no such entitlement) returned swiftly to their){kind=link}
The shocking number of Channel crossings is the root cause of this political chaos. Every legal tool must be thrown at blocking that route
The ongoing failure in our ability to properly process migrants arriving in Kent by small boats (let alone return any of them back to France) continues to fuel community tensions across the country and places ever increasing pressures on the UK Home Office, as well as the revolving door of political leaders that preside over it.
Having served there for over 40 years, at all levels from immigration officer to Director General, I feel their pain. Border Force and Immigration Enforcement Officers are having to confront a growing tide of undocumented immigrants, who themselves are becoming increasingly difficult to manage. A day rarely goes by without our officers being assaulted either at Western Jetfoil or at Manston; and tensions continue to rise at both locations under the sheer weight of numbers and our inability to move them on to safe and secure long-term accommodation, or to return them swiftly whence they came.
Many distinguished commentators – not least David Neal, the Independent Chief Inspector of Borders and Immigration – have openly described the new processing centre at Manston as hopelessly unfit for purpose. Moreover, hotels across the UK are filling up with migrants, at a huge cost to the UK taxpayer, with the asylum backlog already standing at over 100,000. Many local authorities across the country are refusing to accept more migrants into their communities as they are already struggling to deliver housing and social services to their indigenous population.
Of course, there has always been a huge pressure to emigrate to the UK. Despite the weather, it is a destination country of choice for a great many people from across the globe. In order to control numbers, successive governments have introduced systems to (a) ensure that only those migrants who are entitled to come get here in the first place; and (b) those that do make it without securing prior permission are processed swiftly and (if found to have no such entitlement) returned swiftly to their country of origin. That is, after all, why we all queue up patiently at passport controls when we travel abroad.