ENGLAND TURNING UP THE HEAT

A firm of ‘bounty hunters’ will be paid up to £40million to track down tens of thousands of illegal migrants.
The Border Agency awarded a contract earlier this year as it tries to find up to 170,000 immigrants who have gone missing.
Services company Capita, who won the bid, will be paid according to how many are discovered. The cases will then be handed over to immigration officers who will try to remove them from the country.

Backlog: The UK Border Agency is hunting up to 170,000 missing immigrants
Border chiefs are struggling to deal with the backlog of cases in the Migration Refusal Pool, which is made up of migrants whose appeals to extend their work or student visas were turned down.
They should have then left the country but in many cases officials had no idea whether they had left the country or were still here illegally. In around 40 per cent of cases officials had not even sent out the letter telling them to go back home.
Border Agency chief executive Rob Whiteman revealed the existence of the contract yesterday before the Home Affairs Committee.

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He told MPs that a trial scheme operated by another company, Serco, found one in five of those contacted left the country within six months.
Mr Whiteman said: ‘The contract is a payment by results, where they will make contact with potential over stayers from our records.
‘The potential value of the contract, if they performed very well over a four-year period, would be around £40 million.’
He added: ‘Capita will be paid for the number of people who they make contact with and leave.
‘If nobody leaves, because they make contact with them, nobody will get paid.’

Revealed: Border Agency chief executive Rob Whiteman revealed the existence of the contract with Capita before the Home Affairs Committee yesterday
Committee member James Clappison criticised the agency for allowing huge increases in the immigration backlog.
Mr Clappison, the Tory MP for Hertsmere, said: ‘We have got the equivalent of a small town being added to the Migration Refusal Pool every quarter.’
At the end of June this year the Migration Refusal Pool stood at nearly 175,000 – and was increasing by around 100 every day.
John Vine, chief inspector of border and immigration, discovered it during a routine inspection.
He said urgent action was needed to tackle it, because currently tracking down and removing such illegal migrants was not seen as a priority.
Critics said the emergence of the new backlog raised concerns about the credibility of the immigration system.
In some cases, when migrants had refused to leave, their details were not placed on the Police National Computer.
This means if they were arrested officers would have no idea they were wanted by the immigration authorities.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2205310/Bounty-hunters-private-firms-paid-40m-track-illegal-immigrants.html#ixzz2CrlAjPR0
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