QUOTE OF THE MONTH

‘I haven’t the faintest idea.’

Mr Roberts, director of enforcement and removals at the Immigration and Nationality Directorate, replying to the question as to how many illegal immigrants there were in the UK.

In fact the number of illegal immigrants is in excess of 1million. A report by Professor Salt has estimated that the number of illegal immigrants in Britain to be in the region of 570,000. This figure is arrived at by deducting the number of foreign nationals who are known to be living here legally from the total number who stated in the 2001 census that they were born overseas.

Needless to say, not all illegal immigrants diligently fill in their census forms. Furthermore, this 570,000 figure ignored the estimated 715,700 to 772,400 asylum seekers who were in the system at the time of the April 2001 census. Since the vast majority of those claims will have been adjudged to be false, and since there is no effort on the part of Labour to deport those failed asylum seekers, the overwhelming majority of them will be still here.

Then there are all the other forms of illegal immigration which have continued since 2001, as well as the continued inflow of so-called asylum seekers. A UN report last year, by Khalid Koser of the Global Commission on International Migration, warned that 100,000 illegal immigrants enter Britain each year and criticised the Government for hiding the true number of illegal immigrants living here, and further warned that the scale of mass migration to Britain would continue.

So the figure is in excess of 1million and rising.