I wasn't too fussed about the vans with the "illegal immigrants go home" posters at first. Then I read India Knight's column (pay wall) in the Sunday Times where she compared them to racist graffiti. This changed my mind.
Apparently, the Home Office has spent £10,000 pounds on this campaign. That sounds a lot of money for two poster vans and a few leaflets!
In the meantime a parliamentary committee has confirmed what I have thought for a long time - the figures for immigration are a "best guess". They are based on interviewing a few thousand people travelling in and out of the country. We can be sure that anyone who is intending to work illegally, or over-stay their visa, is not going to tell the truth! I strongly suspect that there are far more over-stayers than other kinds of illegal immigrants.
A previous government stopped the recording the details of people leaving the country, presumably to save money. This means that we have no idea who, or how many people, over-stay their permission to enter the country.
Rather then spend £10,000 on this gimmick, it would be a much better idea to get the "E-Borders" project under way so that the borders agency will know exactly who has entered and who has left the country.
That money would also have been better spent on helping the borders agency process its incredible backlog of illegal immigration cases.
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