Real History and the Immigrant Tide engulfing the English The Index to the Traditional Enemies of Free Speech Alphabetical index (text) The Independent London, Home Office told of immigration scam 18 months ago, claims Davis By Nigel Morris, Home Affairs Correspondent THE turmoil over immigration policy deepened last night after it emerged that the Home Office was warned 18 months ago about an “organised scam” to spirit
bogus workers into Britain. The disclosure, in a fresh set of leaked documents to Conservatives, intensified the political pressure on David Blunkett , the Home Secretary, hours after he suspended all immigration applications from Bulgaria and Romania. David Irving comments: NONE SO blind as those that won’t see, continued What a madhouse.
If Adolf Hitler were still in power today, he would only have to Blacken the faces of his elite division troops and they would be invited in by Britain’s Labour government and given Social Security handouts on arrival. Invasion would be unnecessary. See my comments already in yesterday’s AR-Online . Mr Blunkett was forced for the second time in two days to issue a robust defence of the Immigration minister, Beverley Hughes , who has faced repeated demands for her resignation.
The latest came when James Cameron , a British diplomat in Romania, was suspended after claiming visa applications were waved through indiscriminately by immigration officials. The Home Office was thrown further on to the defensive by fresh accusations yesterday about the lax checks on migrants from Romania and Bulgaria and claims that ministers must have been aware of the problems in handling immigration applications from those two countries.
David Davis , the shadow Home Secretary, produced a letter from John Ramsden , a senior Foreign Office official, to Chris Mace , deputy director general of the Immigration and Nationality Directorate (IND) at the Home Office.
Sent on 5 November 2002, six months after Ms Hughes became Immigration minister, he reported that the British embassy in the Bulgarian capital, Sofia, had alerted him to “an organised scam that completely undermines our entry control procedures — and indeed makes a bit of a nonsense of having a visa regime”.
About 70 Bulgarians had submitted applications, under the European Communities Association Agreements (ECAA) scheme to allow people from countries about to join the EU, to set up businesses in Britain. Each had produced virtually identical business plans and some admitted the plans were written by solicitors who were charging [] for a “guaranteed” UK visa.
Mr Ramsden wrote: “The applicants rarely know what is in their business plan, cannot speak English, and have absolutely no knowledge or experience in the type of skills needed for respective businesses.” He complained that applications — even from people previously caught submitting forged documents — were being approved by IND staff in Britain against the embassy’s “strongest recommendations”. The Tories released details of several farcical applications that were approved.
They included a one-legged man given permission to be a roof tiler and a man who had lost several fingers who successfully applied to work as an electrician. In a second letter to IND headquarters, sent by a vice-consul in Sofia on 20 October, it was warned about Bulgarians travelling to Britain ostensibly on holiday then applying for ECAA status in this country. Of a party of 48 organised by one tour group, a total of 37 failed to