There is now triple ring of security that protects Britain: fingerprint visas, ID cards for foreign
nationals that lock people to one identity and hi-tech electronic border controls that check
people against police, immigration and customs watch-lists and will cover even more passenger
journeys by the end of this year.
They are also taking tough enforcement action. Since the UK Border Agency was launched in April
2008, UKBA staff have made over 4,900 arrests as a result of people encountered during illegal
working operations and our tough new force at the border last year stopped over 28,000
individual attempts to cross the Channel illegally.
Dispite of all these tough laws and sofiscated system to prevent illegal immigration into Britain,
Also immigrants figure out how to enter and stay in Britain. Look below some methods immigrant are using:
Sham marriages are a popular way that illegal immigrants can gain UK marriage visas enabling them to live in
the UK permanently.
Home Office Figures show there has been a 54 per cent increase in the number of sham marriages
taking place in England and Wales over the past year.
Some 529 such cases were reported by registrars in 2009, and the rise has been attributed to the
dropping of a government scheme that required foreigners to obtain Home Office permission to
marry in the UK. This was found to be a breach of human rights and was withdrawn leading to
a rise in scam marriages.
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Mark Rimmer,
superintendent registrar for the London Borough of Brent
The government legislated to address the issue and were very successful.
"If nothing is done, I think we will go back to where we were. We had people
queuing up in our waiting area – all of them were just bogus marriage after bogus marriage.
Mr Rimmer said registrars were seeing cases where the couple could not speak each other's
language and their body language made it obvious that they barely knew each other.
He added: "Pakistani and Portuguese is one that has seemed to crop up recently.
If you see one couple … that's OK. But when you see three in a week, you start to think
that something strange is going on."
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Phil Woolas,
ex-immigration minister
the government regretted the Law Lords' ruling and was looking again at the law.
"If nothing is done, I think we will go back to where we were. We had people
queuing up in our waiting area – all of them were just bogus marriage after bogus marriage.
"Just because someone is married does not mean at all that their immigration status is
granted, " he said.
"The registrars have a system of reporting where they think a marriage is not genuine.
Those reports are then used by the immigration officials. The issue of marriage is
different to immigration status. A visa will not be issued if there is reason to think
the marriage is not genuine."
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UK Border Agency officers based in France have thwarted an attempt by ten
illegal immigrants to smuggle themselves into the UK - hidden in a lorry load of wheelie bins.
The officers were alerted to the presence of the stowaways by UK Border Agency sniffer
dog Lois, an 18 month old male springer spaniel.
The Bulgarian-registered lorry was stopped at Calais at 0715 on Friday 23 January.
A search of the load by UK Border Agency officers revealed the 10 men (nine Eritreans and
one Afghan) hidden in the load of wheelie bins.
The lorry was heading for Calderdale but was stopped before it could board a ferry across the Channel.
A spokesman said:
"We have hundreds of UK Border Agency officers based at ports in France and Belgium,
working to stop illegal immigrants before they get to the UK. In addition to searches
with body detection dogs such as Lois, we also use carbon dioxide detectors and heart
beat detectors to find well hidden stowaways.
"Our juxtaposed controls have successfully strengthened our borders and continue to
prevent illegal migrants from entering the UK, stopping over 24,000 attempts to enter
the UK so far over the last year - already six thousand more than the previous year."
The illegal immigrants were handed over to the French authorities.
Caught by bad luck
Four suspected Iranian illegal immigrants were arrested after being smuggled into
the country in a lorry transporting wheelie bins, police said today.
The three men and a boy were caught after they ran from the vehicle as it delivered the
bins at council offices in Maidstone, Kent.
A witness told the Sun newspaper that up to 20 men had been hidden in the lorry.
The witness said: "About 20 men burst out of the truck as it came to a stop.
"They didn't come out the back - they punched their way through the roof and started
running off in all directions."
"They had been hiding inside the wheelie bins for the whole journey."
A spokeswoman for Kent Police said: "Patrols from Kent Police attended College Road,
Maidstone, after reports that men were seen getting out of the back of a French lorry.
"Following a police search, four men were arrested and taken to Maidstone Police Station.
A 20-year-old man from Iran, wanted by Liverpool police, was transferred to Liverpool
City Magistrates court on June 20."
Xray show immigrants hide in back of lorry
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The UK Border Authority has told Newsbeat it deported a record 66,000 illegal immigrants last year as
part of a new attempt to cut the number of people working in Britain without permission.
Immigration officers arrested 10,000 people in raids and sent 5,400 foreign criminals
back to their home country, up from 4,200 in 2007, according to the Home Office. .
But critics say the number of arrests is still "a drop in the ocean" compared to the
750,000 immigrants it is now thought are living in the country without official permission.
They say it would be cheaper and fairer to give illegal workers the full right to a job if they
can prove they have been here for six years and can provide employer and character references.
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Newsbeat went along with five Border Agency officers as they carried out
snap inspections of firms in Southampton suspected of employing illegal workers.
Chief Immigration Officer Simone Sheppard said her team are sent on three or four raids a week.
"It's only over the last seven years that we've started arresting people without the
police," she said.
"We are now looking more at fining the companies employing illegal workers. It's got a
lot more busy, I must say."
On the first raid at a a curry house in the city centre, the officers interviewed 15
kitchen staff and found a single Bangladeshi man suspected of overstaying his short-term
marriage visa.
"On the face of it, it might not look like he's doing anything wrong," said Simone.
"But we've got to look at the bigger picture.
"Sometimes these workers been smuggled into the UK. They don't know why they are coming, their
passports are taken away and they might have to work seven days a week for a pittance of
a wage.
"We've got to help these people and stop this smuggling."
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