Calais And Immigration

Can you drag people being removed onto a plane kicking and screaming, or gagged and bound? Not possible, no airline will accept passengers on this basis on an ordinary commercial flight.

Can you charter a special flight to take a bunch of removees to a certain country? Possibly, but not if the destination country refuses flight clearance, and not if the removees do not have passports. And special flights to many countries every week would cost £millions, so this can only be done occasionally.

Can you force people who don't have passports to apply for them? Possibly, but this involves filling in forms, supplying (non-existent) documentary evidence, photos, witnesses, and the other country being willing to issue a passport, which they often are not. Plus the new passport once issued can be torn up and burnt just as easily as the old one.

Can you offer money to people to leave voluntarily? Yes, that's more practical but then the Mail will publish virulent condemnation of the payments.

It's really not all that simple, is it? Every new Home Secretary coming into office blindly promises to deliver more removals - and then discovers the real difficulties, so fails to do so.

 

Therefore it a makes sense to check people at the point of entry.

 

I suspect you are actually talking about removals, not deportations, am I right? People being deported have been convicted and sentenced, have served a prison sentence or part of it, and are released from prison and sent home at the same time. If they didn't want to go they could stay in prison longer, which very few do, and they nearly always have passports in the ordinary way. People being deported might come from any country in the world, and most would be only too glad to be allowed to go home as soon as possible.

In a small proportion of cases, the same person both has committed an offence calling for deportation, and has an immigration status calling for removal. If in addition their country of origin is one where there might be justification for asylum, the situation becomes complicated and hard to resolve.

 

Millions of people pour into the UK every year and millions of people pour out again. Nearly all of them are tourists on holiday, passengers in transit, businessmen, aircrew, sailors, students, people visiting family, and people with British passports. Nearly all of them leave if they are supposed to leave. A small proportion of them turn out to commit crimes, or to have entered for false reasons, or to overstay their visas. Others use clandestine means to evade checks altogether. Perhaps you would be good enough to indicate how you think checking people at point of entry can possibly make a practical difference overall - or is it intended to be merely a gesture?

 

They used to get BA Barracus on a plane every week in the A team, perhaps we should just feed them all with burgers laced with Hannibals special sleepy stuff

 

Scanning the travel document or passport of every person who presents themselves at a UK border means you can see who is re entering the country. With the potential issues surrounding persons returning from places such as Syria and Iraq, it's vital we do this on a security basis. However, if people return by clandestine means there's not much we can do to keep tabs on them.

 

I can see it now,

Mr Baracus, your application for asylum in the United Kingdom has been declined.
Here have a glass of milk.

 

Don't know Pete, not my line of work. All I know is that if it is difficult to get rid of them, as you pointed out, then let's be more selective about who we let in in the first place.

 

More selective, eh? So we ought to turn away the ones who subsequently turn out to commit crimes, or subsequently overstay their visas, or subsequently are found to have entered for reasons other than those they stated. Better employ clairvoyants as Immigration Officers then.

 

Excellent idea

 

Yes, removals.

The whole thing reminds me of something like Snakes and Ladders, or Ludo, where the would-be immigrant is trying to overcome obstacles in order to reach "home". When they get there, they have effectively won as getting rid of them is so difficult as to be basically impossible. What sort of % do you suppose ever gets removed? 5%?

I suspect the only bargaining chip we might have (and not a very good one) is overseas aid. You could make it a prerequisite of aid that the country in question would have to accept its nationals back if they show up in the UK. You would imagine that we wouldn't be giving aid to those countries from which we would accept genuine asylum seekers. Maybe that is what occurs in any case.

 

Admit it.
You've been clinging to the bottom of lorries again, haven't you?

 

Don't worry, they're still there. The tunnel doesn't suffer as much as the sea ports. Maybe the Daily Mail has found something better to rant about?