Broken UK Border Agency put out of its misery

Published:  27 Mar at 6 PM
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The troubled UK Border Agency is to be broken up into two separate units after years of serious failures, scandals and a massive backlog.

UK Home Secretary Theresa May announced today that Britain’s immigration authority will be split into two separate sections, one dealing with visas and the other with immigration law enforcement. Reports state that the immigration backlog will take an incredible 24 years to clear.

May stated that the agency, set up during the 12 years of Labour government, operates a closed, defensive and secretive culture and has been responsible for a raft of disastrous immigration scandals. The Home Secretary placed the blame squarely on the shoulders of the Labour Party, adding the agency clearly could not handle the huge number of migrants let in to the country during Labour’s years in government.

May made it clear in her Commons address that she will be passing new laws to remove foreign criminals and illegal immigrants from Britain. The split will take effect as early as next Monday, although a leaked memo suggests that the same staff will work under the same bosses.

In its five years of attempting to protecting Britain’s borders, the UKBA has run up a backlog of over 320,000 cases and downgraded border checks aimed at detecting terrorist activity. it has given wrong information about its crises to the Home Affairs select committee, lost innumerable case files, failed to deport those whose appeals to stay had been refused, allowed hundreds of thousands into the country without prior watch list checks and left over 100,000 applications unopened.

The agency was branded ‘not fit for the purpose’ in a damning report issued yesterday, causing the Home Secretary to take her unprecedented action immediately. Both the new agencies will now fall under Home Office supervision, and will be monitored for results on a regular basis.
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