Smuggling

[saundra]

Watched a tv programme this week about Uk security
,it was made before the terrible tragedy about the lorry incidents
It showed how easy it was for ordinary travellers could smuggle people into uk via lorry car and even a sailing craft I was totally suprised it was on channel 5 I think it 4 we'll worth watching it was on last week as well

[Osc]

They will always find some way around the security.

[saundra]

osc it was sent intend smuggling it was to show how it could be done even into Dover harbour a yatch with I person pretending to be a immigrant just sailed in and the border force boat didn't even go on board to check even one car ging into Ireland and out again to Scotland wasent only passporti incredible .uk is certainly an open border for all

[Workingman]

It is a programme, Smuggled, by C4. An 'un'reality TV mockumentary - part game show, part low-level investigation. Most of the methods used have been available for decades and all are small scale, some were even semi legit, all of which means that the people smuggling gangs would not be anywhere near them.

For the gangs it is a numbers game and one man in a kayak or an old girl in a campervan toilet do not cut it.

If C4 can get a container lorry loaded in Albania with 25 or so volunteers, or a semi-ridged motor boat from Wissant with five families on board, back to the UK fit and well then I will take notice.

[saundra]

Well my opinion is totally different to you WM

[Workingman]

Sorry about that Saundra, but I am just trrying to be a bit more realistic than the programme. Immigration concerns me and there are two types - legal and illegal.

Legal immigration, that allowed, regulated and promoted by government, concerns me the most. Under that system a population of a city the size of Leicester is allowed in year on year. The government has control over their numbers whether the individuals come from the EU or the RoW but there is no political will, regardless of the party in power, to bring the numbers down. Of all types of immigrants these are the ones who put most pressure on services such as schools, housing and the NHS.

On the other hand the numbers of illegal immigrants, by their very nature, is difficult to pin down. Over the past five years the numbers detained has averaged about 27,000 people per year. The numbers returned averages 12,000, meaning that "officially" the numbers of those allowed to stay is approx 5% of those allowed in legally - about 15,000.

Where I take issue with the programme is that all of its fake "illegals" left the UK by legal means then tried to get back in (in UK registered means) by tricking the system ... and seven out of eight attempts worked. I agree that these routes exist and are used, but to make out that there are floods of illegals coming in via them is not the case. That is not to say that we should not do more in the way of checking and prevention.