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.
KINGPIN: Marset allegedly laundered the proceeds of his drug enterprise by purchasing and sponsoring professional soccer teams and even put himself in the starting lineups Notorious Latin American narco trafficker Sebastian Marset, who eluded police for years, was handed over to US authorities after his arrest on Friday in Bolivia. Marset, a Uruguayan national who was on the US most-wanted list, was passed to agents of the US Drug Enforcement Administration at Santa Cruz airport in Bolivia, then put on a US airplane, Bolivian state television showed. “The arrest and deportation were carried out pursuant to a court order issued by the US justice system,” Bolivian Minister of Government Marco Antonio Oviedo told reporters. The alleged kingpin was arrested in an upscale neighborhood of Santa
FAKE NEWS? ‘When the government demands the press become a state mouthpiece under the threat of punishment, something has gone very wrong,’ a civic group said The top US broadcast regulator on Saturday threatened media outlets over negative coverage of the Middle East war, after US President Donald Trump slammed critical headlines from the “Fake News Media.” The US president since his first term has derided mainstream media as “fake news” and has sued major outlets over what he sees as unfair coverage. Brendan Carr, head of the US Federal Communications Commission — which oversees the nation’s radio, television and Internet media — said broadcasters risked losing their licenses over news coverage. “The law is clear. Broadcasters must operate in the public interest, and they will
SCANDAL: Other images discovered earlier show Andrew bent over a female and lying across the laps of a number of women, while Mandelson is pictured in his underpants A photograph of former British prince Andrew and veteran politician Peter Mandelson sitting in bathrobes alongside late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was unearthed on Friday in previously published documents. The image is believed to be the first known photograph of the two men with Epstein. They are currently engulfed in scandal in the UK over their ties to their mutual friend. The undated photograph, first reported by ITV News, shows King Charles III’s disgraced brother and former British ambassador to the US sitting barefoot outside on a wooden deck. They appear to have mugs with a US flag on them
INFLUTENTIAL THEORIST: Habermas was particularly critical of the ‘limited interest’ shown by German politicians in ‘shaping a politically effective Europe Jurgen Habermas, whose work on communication, rationality and sociology made him one of the world’s most influential philosophers and a key intellectual figure in his native Germany, has died. He was 96. Habermas’ publisher, Suhrkamp, said he died on Saturday in Starnberg, near Munich. Habermas frequently weighed in on political matters over several decades. His extensive writing crossed the boundaries of academic and philosophical disciplines, providing a vision of modern society and social interaction. His best-known works included the two-volume Theory of Communicative Action. Habermas, who was 15 at the time of Nazi Germany’s defeat, later recalled the dawn of
RSS