Security checks
The home secretary's story today was that she didn't reveal the problem of illegal immigrants working in the security industry as she thought it best to act first to measure the scale of the problem and then to sort it out.
The figures she produced indicate that the figure of 5,000 illegal immigrants licensed to work in the security industry may turn out to be an underestimate. Based on the outcome of checks made so far the worst case scenario could be over 8,000. Ministers insist that it is impossible to be more precise than they have been so far since they will only have accurate figures once checks are complete in December and say that 5,000 is still the best estimate at the moment.
This is how the worst case scenario (not, I should stress either a Home Office or a ´óÏó´«Ã½ estimate) is calculated:
Officials in the Borders and Immigration Agency are still checking the immigration status of 40,000 people from outside the European Economic Area who have been licensed to work in the security industry.
10.5% of a sample of 6,000 cases have been shown not to have a right to work.
Checks are ongoing on 12.5% who simply do not appear on the Border and Immigration Agency records. A Home Office official has conceded that they are "almost certainly not entitled to work".
If this proves to be correct then the total figure of those not entitled to work will be 23% (10.5% + 12.5%).
If the sample of 6,000 cases is representative of the 40,000 backlog and around 23% turn out not to be entitled to work the figure would be around 8,800.
There are a couple of reasons for treating this worst case scenario with caution:
The figure is reached by extrapolating from a sample. Later checks may reveal that a lower proportion are illegals. The Home Office have indicated that the Borders and Immigration Agency started examining those cases they regarded as the highest risk - ie looking at certain nationalities and postcodes which are associated with illegal immigration.
The figure is based on an assumption that all 12.5% of "unknowns" prove not to be entitled to work. This may prove to be inaccurate.
I'm 
Comments
Nick, I am confused. I assume that anyone working in the security industry undergoes security checks. These checks would indicate that certain candidates were illegal immigrants. In this case how were they hired?
So, either the security checks were useless (not good news unless you're al-Qaida or their ilk), or they were employed despite their employers knowing their illegal status.
In either case the mind boggles. The Home office is not only 'unfit for purpose', it is criminally negligent. Will heads - starting right at the top - roll? I doubt it.
Come on Nick, tell it how it is.. No comment on the dire straits the Govt is in over yet another fiasco.. No history of how it was when Charles Clarke was Home Secretary? Can one deduce from your post thats its just an unfortunate administrative error or what.?
How did the Home Secretary perform in the HOC?
Is it credible she didn't ever mention it to the Prime Minister at Cabinet........
Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodies?
Well no-one at The Home Office that's for sure.
Smith has stated that it is the "legal duty" of all employers to ensure that their employees were entitled to work in the UK. If, as has been mentioned, the Home Office was employing illegals, isn't Smith responsible for failing in her legal duty? For this alone, without going in to all her other failings, cover-ups, etc. she should be immediately dismissed.
Nick, you should study statistics. It is just as likely that the sample underestimates the percentage of illegals as overestimates them!
10.5% of 6000 have been shown not to have the right to work. This gives a mean of 630 and a standard deviation of 23 ( 3 1/2 %)
This means that there is a 50% chance of the figure being higher than 10.5%, but only a 17% chance that it is higher than 14%.
So the worst case scenario ahould be 14% + 12.5% = 26.5% or just over 10,000. - this figure will be right about one in six of the time.
Would you agree that Jacqui Smith gave a rather stuttering and halting performance today, which did not exude confidence?
A minimum of 40000 workers from outside the EEC have been licensed to work in the Security Industry.Can someone explain what we need all these Security people for.Who are they protecting and for what reason.How many Security Gaurds are employed in the UK and why are these people not recruited from the four or five million "Brits" who are not gainfully employed in the UK at the present time.There is no point in commenting on Jacqui Smith's speech unless you can translate the hundreds and hundreds of Um-Er and UM, ER, Ar's which littered the rubbish she was spouting.It was pitiful to see and hear her trying to justify a Department famously described as "Not fit for purpose".
Surely there can be very little doubt that the government simply wanted to cover this up and hope nobody noticed.
But what exactly is all the fuss about anyway? Is it the Home Office incompetence? Or is it the delicious irony that these people are working in the security industry?
Is it paranoia about potential terrorists under every bed, for which we suspect simple targets who cannot defend themselves?
This security industry, is it top level secret squirrel stuff or people watching CCTV screens and patrolling empty warehouses at night?
Or is it that we have such a complex and uncompromising system in this country for immigration but we run it in such a shambolic way that it stands no hope of working anyway??
I was hoping you'd pick up on this story, Nick. This is a sound approach by the Home Secretary. She is quite correct to identify issues and put solutions in place before being too free with information as that just fuels an argument that gets in the way. There's a balance between action and discussion and, I think, she's got it just about right. This should help marginalise the daydreamers and troublemakers at the extremes of the spectrum and help everyone focus on solutions.
I think, we're very lucky to have a Home Secretary like Jacqui Smith in the context of Broken Britain and globalisation. Her approach is useful and sensitive. This makes her very effective in routing around mistakes and difficulties and driving national success for government, organisations, and individuals on the ground. By remaining sure of purpose and patient, the issues that concern us will be fixed and a better outcome prevail. This has earned my unalloyed respect and admiration.
Lead or follow but get the hell out of my way! Go Jackie.
This whole farce just goes to show what utter contempt Labour have for a sensible immigration policy (including background checks). How can we let people enter the country and live/work here without having a clue who they are?
Anyone working in the security industry must provide a checkable 10-year employment history; obviously some of the people in this case wouldn't have survived even a cursory check much less rigorous than that. It is clear that the employers (manned guarding companies) are breaking the law in a big way ...
One more manifestation, I fear, of the drip, drip, drip loss of standards in our society over the decades. Anything goes these days, nobody cares, nobody checks, nobody protests, nobody makes a stand, nobody resigns as a matter of honour. Everyone is happy to get away with not bothering, cheating the system, doing things for show only, not because it is right.
This may be an exagerated and simplified view of Britain, but, listening to the media day after day one can all too easily get this impression.
Gone is the thin red line, gone are the sacred taboos, and some might say that society is all the healthier for it, but it seems to me that this 'freedom' we now have has left us open to other ills which have ultimately brought down every great civilisation, such as corruption and decadence.
Beware the slippery slope? Too late, I fear!
I wonder on close examination how many of these illeagals are Australians and New Zealanders who have remained here after their work visa's have expired and are working as door men in pubs and clubs.
There is a basic racism in this country which means that these people are more acceptable as illegal immigrants than the many legal Eastern Europeans who are working hard to support themselves and their families. Often doing jobs we no longer want to do.
Our government appears to be a ship of fools.
Have I got this quite right? Is it now the case that a Minister can deliberately NOT tell Parliament about an evident issue of public concern until she has hidden it from view? Did we not used to call such actions 'deceitful', or is that such an unparliamentary thought and expression that it can't be uttered?
# Charles E Hardwidge wrote:
...............Go Jacquie!
For the first and probably the last time I 100% concur with him.
And the sooner the better!
I am happy to agree with Charles Hardwidge.
Jacqui Smith is a remarkable woman, and witty too.
When a security guard demanded her pass at Labour's Conference she couldn't find it.
"I think it'll be alright, I am the Home Secretary . . ."
So sourly distempered are most Tory blaggists that she was subjected to the same blanket blanking of "uninteresting" etc as all but Barbara Castle in a Daily Telegraph article on Labour's women.
Is it some thing in the water? or beer?
#14
Hilarious.
#18
Not #14, #17!!!
Tory blogger Max Sceptic knows very well that it was the responsibility of employers to check the immigrant status of their security people, which is why he blames the Home Office . . . ?
Many such guards are actually employed by employment agencies, who are perhaps the loudest voice for un unionised immigrant labour because they are a real gravy train for them.
I bet the firms involved will often blame the agencies re the shortage of checks too.
Not much milage for Conservative Party, or its media acolytes - what a shame!