How to spot an illegal immigrant....

As the Government thinks of ever more ludicrous ways to whip up anti immigration hysteria, here is RAMFEL’s ‘unique’ guide to spotting an illegal immigrant










How to spot an illegal immigrant


1. They are not white


2. They speak with an accent of some description. The real test for the authenticity of the accent is to see how far they can maintain the aforementioned accent, when you shout at them very loudly in English in an attempt to make yourself understood


3. They eat funny foreign foods, not curry like you and I


4. They do jobs that no one else wants to do for less than the minimum wage, but it is still ok to be jealous of that


5. They usually come in groups. Not to be confused with gangs, (because gangs are a British phenomena) nor teams of football supporters, because we the British are the only ones that play football, anything else just wouldn’t be cricket!


No one is opposed to Crimestoppers or the detection, reporting and combating of real crime. As a charity Crimestoppers have undertaken some amazing work, but it makes a mockery of the charity’s claim to work with diverse communities when it allows itself to be so blatantly used in the political war against immigration. Furthermore how many people would really understand the difference,  and be able to distinguish between an asylum seeker, migrant, refugee and someone who was ‘illegal’.


As recent research by the Migration Observatory at Oxford University http://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/understanding-uk-public-opinion/executive-summary demonstrates public understanding of immigration is far divorced from the reality of the situation


• When thinking about immigrants, respondents were most likely to think of asylum seekers (62%) and least likely to think of students (29%). In current official (ONS) statistics, students represent the largest group of immigrants coming to the UK (37% of 2009 immigrant arrivals) while asylum seekers are the smallest group (4% in 2009).


• Respondents tended to think of immigrants as those who come to the UK permanently (62%) rather than those who come to stay temporarily (fewer than 30%). This differs from the internationally-agreed definition used for official UK statistics, which classifies anyone who comes to the UK for more than a year as a long-term migrant.


• When thinking about immigrants, people in Britain most commonly think about foreign citizens - 62% normally think about non-EU citizens and 51% about EU citizens (excl. British) - rather than people who were born abroad and acquired British citizenship after moving to the UK (40%). Very low proportions of the public have in mind British citizens moving (11%) or returning (7%) to the UK. Similarly, few people normally have in mind the UK-born children of immigrants to Britain (12%).


It is a reality born out by RAMFEL’s own experience of training, where at the beginning of the course less than 6 (2%) of the 270 people we trained and informed (over the last 12 months) actually knew the difference between and asylum seeker and refugee. The natural consequence of discussions about ‘grassing’ illegals to the police, is one step away from saying that anyone who works with an individual who is here without status, is breaking the law. If ever there was a need for strong leadership in the refugee voluntary sector it is now.


To so blatantly classify ‘immigration’ as a crime, shows both desperation and a misunderstanding of the how inappropriate and callous the current immigration system is. Furthermore when the police are also charged with enforcement and fostering good relations between communities we need to think again as to how we specifically deal with the thorny issue of policing and immigration, nationally and locally.