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Home Office covered up immigration risk

Labour's “open door” immigration policy knowingly risked allowing dangerous people to settle in Britain unchecked, according to documents seen by The Sunday Times.

The Whitehall correspondence, which was illegally withheld by the Home Office for four years, shows how ministers were told by the country’s most senior immigration official that his staff were to be “encouraged to take risks” when granting visas, work permits and extended residency to hundreds of thousands of new migrants.

The cover-up of this policy of risk-taking was so concerted that Richard Thomas, the then information commissioner, sent a team of investigators into the Home Office to trawl all the relevant papers. Earlier this year he rebuked the department for breaking the law and ordered it to release the material under the freedom of information (FoI) law.

The documents help to explain the huge rise in the flow of migrants into Britain as the Home Office rushed to clear a backlog of 45,000 cases.

Officials agreed to fast-track 337,000 applications with minimal checks. This led to a rapid rise in immigration. In 1999, 170,000 visas were granted; by 2002, this had risen to 300,000.

As officials were being ordered to take risks, several potentially dangerous people entered the UK. In late 2001, more than 20 Taliban, who had fled from Afghanistan after their defeat by American and British forces, were allowed to stay in the UK.

The documents cast new light on the row over past immigration policy, highlighted by the recent rise of the British National party.

Last week Alan Johnson became the first Labour home secretary to admit the government had made mistakes in its handling of immigration. He said ministers had ignored problems about failed asylum seekers and foreign national prisoners. They had also failed to grasp public unease about the growing pressure on jobs and public services.


http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6907991.ece

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