Britain's Immigration Minister Beverley Hughes insisted on Tuesday she would not be forced to quit by allegations her department secretly fast-tracked applications from immigrants to clear backlogs in the system.
Hughes and Tony Blair's government have been plunged into a row over immigration after a senior diplomat in Romania blew the whistle on what he says are seriously lax controls which even allow migrants to come to Britain with forged papers.
The diplomat -- the British Consul in Romania James Cameron -- has been suspended from his post.
"My conscience is clear. I have done absolutely nothing wrong," Hughes told the Daily Mirror newspaper. "Had I done anything wrong ... I would resign."
Keith Best, chief executive of the independent Immigration Advisory Service, accused Hughes and her colleagues of "losing control" of the immigration department, which he said was being drowned in a flood of new legislation.
"They [ministers] have concentrated far too much on masses of new legislation," he told BBC radio. "And when you concentrate all that time on blaming lawyers, asylum applicants and immigrants rather than looking at your own department of course you take your eye off the ball."
Opposition Conservatives on Monday revealed an e-mail they had received from Cameron in Romania saying migrants were being let into Britain despite having forged papers.
The diplomat also said immigration officials lacked the language skills to spot fakes and described the processing of applicants from Romania and Bulgaria as "organized crime and UK immigration policy at its worst."
The row comes on the heels of a government inquiry into how checks came to be waived at an immigration center inSheffield in order to clear a backlog there.
Tens of thousands of Filipino Catholics yesterday twirled white cloths and chanted “Viva, viva,” as a centuries-old statue of Jesus Christ was paraded through the streets of Manila in the nation’s biggest annual religious event. The day-long procession began before dawn, with barefoot volunteers pulling the heavy carriage through narrow streets where the devout waited in hopes of touching the icon, believed to hold miraculous powers. Thousands of police were deployed to manage crowds that officials believe could number in the millions by the time the statue reaches its home in central Manila’s Quiapo church around midnight. More than 800 people had sought
DENIAL: Pyongyang said a South Korean drone filmed unspecified areas in a North Korean border town, but Seoul said it did not operate drones on the dates it cited North Korea’s military accused South Korea of flying drones across the border between the nations this week, yesterday warning that the South would face consequences for its “unpardonable hysteria.” Seoul quickly denied the accusation, but the development is likely to further dim prospects for its efforts to restore ties with Pyongyang. North Korean forces used special electronic warfare assets on Sunday to bring down a South Korean drone flying over North Korea’s border town. The drone was equipped with two cameras that filmed unspecified areas, the General Staff of the North Korean People’s Army said in a statement. South Korea infiltrated another drone
COMMUNIST ALIGNMENT: To Lam wants to combine party chief and state presidency roles, with the decision resting on the election of 200 new party delegates next week Communist Party of Vietnam General Secretary To Lam is seeking to combine his party role with the state presidency, officials said, in a move that would align Vietnam’s political structure more closely to China’s, where President Xi Jinping (習近平) heads the party and state. Next week about 1,600 delegates are to gather in Hanoi to commence a week-long communist party congress, held every five years to select new leaders and set policy goals for the single-party state. Lam, 68, bade for both top positions at a party meeting last month, seeking initial party approval ahead of the congress, three people briefed by
Cambodia’s government on Wednesday said that it had arrested and extradited to China a tycoon who has been accused of running a huge online scam operation. The Cambodian Ministry of the Interior said that Prince Holding Group chairman Chen Zhi (陳志) and two other Chinese citizens were arrested and extradited on Tuesday at the request of Chinese authorities. Chen formerly had dual nationality, but his Cambodian citizenship was revoked last month, the ministry said. US prosecutors in October last year brought conspiracy charges against Chen, alleging that he had been the mastermind behind a multinational cyberfraud network, used his other businesses to launder
RSS