Davis calls for independent investigation of sex-for-passports allegations

"Lie back and think of England" is how The Sun headlines its whistleblower story on sex-for-passports in a Croydon immigration office: 

"A sex for passports racket at Britain’s busiest immigration centre is exposed today by The Sun.  Corrupt officials bed attractive girls desperate to avoid being kicked out of the country in return for granting them visas.  Meanwhile “ugly” migrants risk having their applications rejected — and their pictures pinned on a wall for staff to laugh at.  The scandal at Lunar House in Croydon, South London — which also processes applications by asylum seekers — was last night exposed by a whistleblower who quit in disgust."

Shadow Home Secretary David Davis has reacted with fury:

“How long is it going to take the Government to get this department sorted out? Over the last two years, we have seen immigration officers turning a blind eye to illegal immigrants to keep official figures down, visas and citizenship applications being rubber-stamped without proper checks, and scams in Romania and Bulgaria where people were given visas in the full knowledge their claims were fraudulent. Now we have extremely serious allegations of security breaches and corruption.  Throughout that time there has been a history of cover-up in the Home Office so it is vital that the Government’s investigation should be independent, public and lead to real action rather than yet more unfulfilled promises.”

Download Labour's_troubled_record_on_immigration.

Comments

[James Maskell]

This article reminds me of a sketch from Bremners show. Bremner as Blair talking to the people shortly after the election. He lists all the things that Labour have done wrong and says that despite that, they just wont vote him out. Begging to be voted out of office. Great sketch.

This is another example of the incompetent and disgraceful way this Government behaves. It couldnt give a * what happens as long as the numbers look good.

[Selsdon Man]

Government officials are corrupt? What's new? Night follows day?

Absolute power corrupts and power corrupts absolutely!

[Basil Blogger]

This story illustrates what we already knew that the asylum and immigration system is out of control.

It is well know that legitimate British Passports and foreign passports with valid UK residence visas are being sent by post overseas and also taken by couriers overseas to allow illegal UK entry.

We need stricter immigration controls now... if Australia, New Zealand and the United States have stricter immigration controls than the UK, why is it that when the English people talk about this subject they naturally get called all sorts of names.

Germany has always imported migrant labour, but unlike the UK the immigrants who come to Germany to work have no entitlement to German Citizenship and come to work in Germany on this understanding and on the basis that when their labour is no longer needed they will go back to their original countries.

A person born in the Indian subcontinent who studied at university in India, he came to the UK in 2002 on a work permit to work for a British Asian IT consultancy in the UK, which he is no longer working for having left three months ago. He has no family connections to the UK and when asked if we needed to get a work permit for him he assured us that he will have a British passport within the next six months. Something is wrong or fishy here with the work permit system as a method of getting people into the UK?

It is frightening that we do not know who is in this country and who has left.

France has a widely publicised voluntary repatriation policy. The French government will pay all airfares and the resettlement costs of immigrants who wish to go back to their country of origin. Why should anyone in the UK who proposes such a policy be called a racist when the French have had this policy for years.

Biometric Passports and ID cards are essential to help identify just who is legally here in this country. Biometric passports will also help put a stop to those people in the UK who are sending their passports abroad by mail to relatives and friends living overseas so that they can come illegally and enter the UK. It is well known that passport and immigration officers rarely examine passport photographs.

Another complaint is the time it takes to process applications for immigration and asylum, the typical average time of five years was too long and that once the application has been rejected it is difficult to deport the mainly males who apply because in the five years they have been waiting here in this country they would have married a local British girl and had two or three children born here.

[Dontmakemelaugh]

Very well put, Basil. Many of us know and understand your points. However, I understand that according to Mr Cameron the Tories were wrong to emphasis the immigration issue during the last election (nasty) and it cost them votes? When the EU spokesman stated that dear old Mr Howard would not be allowed to implement his immigration policies Mr Howard missed a golden opportunity to cut the EU down to size - he, to my knowlege, remained mute and the EU unanswered. Hence, I did not vote Conservative and as Charles Moore has remarked, that on the EU the Tories say one thing, but do something else. We are still awaiting the few crumbs of withrawing from the EPP to be thrown our way. Our politicians are sleep walking.

[Observer]

In the rush to call the Conservatives, and indeed members of the public, 'racist' for proposing limits on immigration, a crucial point of moral comparison is always overlooked.

Practically all countries excluding Western democracies have very strict immigration laws and are quite unabashed about limiting immigration to people who belong to the same ethnic group (either that, or an applicant will have to marry one of their citizens, or have substantial investment funds).

Peter Brimelow, author of 'Alien Nation (easily the best critique of America's immigration system) once phoned up the embassies of half a dozen countries, including Egypt, Taiwan, the Phillipines, Jamaica and India, to enquire about emigrating. He was told in no uncertain terms that he wouldn't have a hope of becoming a citizen unless he met the criteria mentioned in the last paragraph. Brimelow pointed out that much hullaballo has been made about the 'White Australia' immigration policy, but India effectively has a 'Brown India' immigration policy.

Doubtless this is far from being the best basis on which to form an immigration policy, but if liberals will insist on condemning people in this country for calling for limits on immigration, then why not also condemn the far more blatantly ethnocentric policies of non-Western countries? As the left believes in universal human rights, it must also believe in universal moral standards; so why aren't liberals consistent in their moral outrage? I look forward to the Guardian leader column savaging the Indian Government for its backward refusal to open its borders to ethnic diversity.

[EU Serf]

Observer

When you recall the fact that in some people's minds, the worse abuser of human rights in the Middle East is Israel, you will understand the difficulty of proposing your otherwise excellent thought.