LOC09:36
06:36 GMT
LONDON, June 6 (KUNA) -- British Home Secretary Theresa May was holding
talks with her French counterpart in Calais, northern France, Monday as she
inspects the cross-Channel border controls, officials said.
May was meeting French interior minister Claude Gueant as they examine the
security of the port and tunnel ahead of next year's Olympic Games in London.
It will be the first time a French interior minister has visited the Calais
border operations since Nicolas Sarkozy, now president, vowed to close the Red
Cross's controversial Sangatte refugee camp when he visited in 2002.
The visit comes the week after MPs accused the UK Border Agency (UKBA) of
creating an amnesty for asylum seekers in an immigration system which is "not
fit for purpose", commentators noted.
British Prime Minister David Cameron has pledged to reduce net migration to
the tens of thousands by 2015 but figures released last week showed it hit 242,
000 at the end of last year - its highest level in more than five years.
Immigration and the measures being taken to secure the UK's border will be
central to today's talks amid concerns that tens of thousands of migrants
fleeing the turmoil in north Africa may head to Calais's ports to try to make
their way to Britain.
Under the Schengen Agreement, citizens in 25 mainland European Union (EU)
nations are allowed to travel across borders without having their passports
checked.
But the deal is under threat as tensions have risen over the fleeing
migrants after Italy handed more than 25,000 Tunisians temporary permits to
travel, effectively giving them unobstructed travel around the 25 EU nations.
The UK and Ireland are not part of the agreement.
Last week, MPs on the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee warned that
public confidence in immigration controls was being undermined by the UKBA's
failures.
The agency looked set to achieve its target of clearing the historic
backlog of 450,000 cases by this summer "largely through increasing resort to
grants of permission to stay", the committee's report found.
Asylum seekers in some 74,500 cases have disappeared without a trace, with
officials admitting they have no idea whether they are still in the UK, have
left or even died.
Four out of 10 of the cases that have been concluded led to the asylum
seeker being allowed to stay in the UK.
Keith Vaz, the committee chairman, said a change in official guidance which
allowed tens of thousands of migrants to stay "amounts in effect to an
amnesty", adding that it was clear the agency was "still not fit for purpose".
"We consider this indefensible," he said.
But Immigration Minister Damian Green denied the claims, saying the
Government was overhauling the "chaotic and uncontrolled" regime left by the
previous government.
A separate critical report last month also found the UKBA lacked the
information needed to manage immigration effectively.
The UKBA, hampered by a lack of exit controls, failed to monitor migrants'
rights to remain in the UK and to make sure they leave when they are supposed
to, the Commons Committee of Public Accounts (Pac) said.
Some 181,000 people who should have left may still be in the UK, the agency
estimates, but "it does not have the right information to know if this is an
accurate estimate", the MPs said.(end)
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