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Immigration

Answer

[holding answer 22 January 2009]: We are delivering the biggest shake-up of Britain's border security and immigration system in a generation.Last year we launched the UK Border Agency. With a combined budget of £2 billion, a staffing complement of 25,000 and a presence in 135 countries world-wide, Britain's border security is now among the toughest in the world.Since the launch of the UKBA our officers have seized over 800 million cigarettes, representing a potential loss of over £149 million in tax revenue, £260 million worth of illegal drugs and have taken 4,800 dangerous weapons, including firearms, stun guns and hundreds of knives, off the streets. For the same period, over 809,000 freight vehicles have been searched at our juxtaposed controls and we stopped over 21,000 attempts to cross the Channel illegally.The new points based system and the continuing ban on non-EU low skilled migrants we are controlling migration to ensure that only those the UK needs can come to work and study. This allows us to attract and keep people with the skills our economy needs; maximizing the benefits to Britain.Anyone applying for a visa—three quarters of the world's population—now has their fingerprints checked against UK databases. So far we have enrolled over 3.6 million sets of fingerprints detecting over 5,200 identity swaps.Airline Liaison Officers have assisted in preventing nearly 210,000 people from boarding planes over the last five years. That is equivalent to about two jumbo jets a week.We have also introduced ID cards for foreign nationals and a hi-tech electronic borders system, the e-Borders Programme, which will be fully rolled out by March 2014 and will enable us to count people in and out of Britain. The pilot scheme for the Government's electronic borders system has already checked over 75 million passenger journeys before arrival in the UK, leading to over 2,700 arrests.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

487 c289W; 249477

Session

2008-09

Subjects

Undocumented migrants

Link

View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk