Home Office unaware of full extent of illegal immigration in Britain
A report by the UK’s National Audit Office (NAO) has concluded that the Home Office simply does not know the true number of illegal immigrants living in Britain.
The British government has not had an up-to-date “estimate” of the number of illegal immigrants in the UK in 15 years, the report has found.
The last official estimate in 2005 concluded that 430,000 people were residing in the country with no legal right to remain.
According to the NAO, subsequent independent research has placed this figure at over a million.
For example, a Pew Research Center estimate last November put the population of illegal immigrants in Britain at between 800,000 and 1.2 million, but the NAO does not endorse those figures.
Reacting to the NAO report, Labor MP Meg Hillier, who is chairwoman of the Commons Public Accounts Committee, said the assessment demonstrates that the Home Office “has no idea how many people are in the country illegally and doesn’t seem interested in finding out”.
But the Auditor General of the NAO, Gareth Davies, was less critical of the Home Office, claiming that whilst the department had introduced “significant changes” to its “enforcement activity”, it cannot demonstrate that “overall performance is improving”.
"The department [Home Office] needs a better understanding of the impact of its immigration enforcement activity on its overarching vision to reduce the size of the illegal population and the harm it causes", Davies added.
Nevertheless, the findings of the NAO report is likely to cause alarm across the country as the British government does not appear to understand the full impact of illegal immigration on British society and economy.
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