‘Lille loophole’ just one target for illegal immigrants

Any discussion of illegal immigration into the UK needs to distinguish between practical failures in securing transport routes into the country and the exploitation of inadequacies in the visa system.

The latter category includes visitors who enter the UK with valid visas – to work, to visit, or to see family – who overstay the limit; students who enter the country legally to study but who decide to work, in the process invalidating the visa; and asylum claimants who remain, despite failing in their effort to acquire refugee status.

The “Lille loophole”, identified by John Vine, independent chief inspector of borders and immigration, in this week’s controversial report into border controls between France and this country, falls into the first group.

It is a subterfuge where illegal immigrants – or “clandestines”, as the report calls them – use a Brussels-Lille Eurostar ticket to effect entry in the UK. They remain in the train at Lille, circumventing UK Border Force immigration checks there, and continue on to London St Pancras.

‘Cause for concern’

The report says there is still “cause for concern” over border security on the Lille-St Pancras route. But it has prompted criticism because the section of the document which appears to detail these concerns has been edited out, or “redacted”, by Home Secretary Theresa May.

John Vine’s report notes that several initiatives have been taken to end the Lille loophole, but he told ITN it has been increasingly used by people to come to Britain “who are undocumented, to claim asylum”.

Some maintain, however, that additional measures are sometimes illogical and arguably disproportionate to the scale of the problem when compared with other ways of entering the UK along England’s south east coast.

Blogger Jon Worth claims that “When you cross to the UK in a car on a ferry or in Eurotunnel, not even your luggage is systematically checked. How hard would it be, I wonder, to stow yourself away in the boot of a car?”

Fingerprinting decision

In any case, the Lille loophole is not the only method would-be immigrants use to get to the UK. The report also looks at Calais, Dunkirk and Coquelles, where it says more than 8,000 illegal immigrants were stopped from entering the UK in the 12 months to August 2012.

Calais and Dunkirk are ferry passenger ports, while Coquelles is the French Eurotunnel terminal for vehicles crossing the channel. The analysis is critical of the decision by the UK Border Agency to stop fingerprinting illegal immigrants at Calais and Coquelles. It says biometric information gained in fingerprinting could help in subsequent asylum claims by those fingerprinted.

And Dover, the majority of whose ferry traffic is with Calais, was recently in the news when 15 illegal immigrants were found in a tanker on a P&O Calais-Dover ferry in the town’s eastern docks.

South east focus

In 2011 the home secretary came under fire when it emerged guards at Dover were making no electronic passport checks, as a result of which there was no cross-checking to ascertain whether or not passport holders were on a computer database of wanted terrorists or criminals.

Controversy over the Sangatte refugee camp near Calais led to its closure by the French government in 2002, in response to UK concerns that it was a base for illegal immigration into the UK.

Dover was also the location in 2000 for a notorious incident in which 58 Chinese illegal immigrants were found dead in the back of a lorry after suffocating.

The European mainland’s proximity to the south east – which embraces not just the Channel tunnel and the region’s ferry terminals, but also Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted airports – means this part of the UK is the focus for such incidents.

But a report in 2011 warned that a growing number of illegal immigrants were exploiting the “common travel area”, a free movement zone between the Irish Republic and the United Kingdom to secure “back-door” entry into the UK.