Asylum officers stuck at desks

IMMIGRATION officers have been criticised for wasting public money claiming overtime while spending excessive hours at their desks, when they should be catching illegal entrants. A report by Home Office officials and consultants has shown that less than half an officer’s time is spent on tracking down the estimated 300,000 failed asylum seekers. The rest is spent on paperwork or training.

The inquiry also found that £1.8m was spent teaching staff to conduct arrests, only for them to be removed from frontline operational duties. It said some officers were rostering themselves to work weekends when they can claim overtime, instead of during the week when they were more likely to detect bogus refugees.

Government figures this month showed the number of failed refugees being removed from Britain was falling despite the huge backlog of cases.

Shouldn't our immigration officials be spending more time doing the job that they are supposed to do instead of wasting their time and our money? They should be spending atleast 90% of their time tracking down criminals and not doing nothing. Immigration officials should be stopped from receiving overtime if they haven't filled their quota of immigrants. Its time that those that wasted tax payers money were sacked and replaced with competant officials who would do some good.

If they register for overtime at the weekends why aren't they capturing illegals then? Illegals aren't just here during the week and neither should immigration officials.

This is scandalous. When is Blair going to actually do something about it instead of letting the hoardes in?