00:00Welcome back, 11.43. You're with Ben and Nana on Bristons Newsroom on GB News.
00:05Now, in some shocking government news, or I guess not so shocking, given Labour's track record this past year,
00:10it has been revealed that the Home Office are unaware of how many migrants might have overstayed their skilled worker visas.
00:17Oh, very good, yeah. Not a clue where they are. Human rights lawyer David Hay joins us now for this.
00:21David, good morning. Does this surprise you?
00:25Good morning to you both. I mean, you can probably tell from the smile on my face, not at all.
00:29I mean, it should surprise everyone, but it doesn't.
00:33They've got absolutely no grip on who is in the country and haven't had for a long time.
00:38And that's a really big problem. I mean, obviously, we see more people coming across the channel today.
00:44That's insignificant compared to the number of people that are overstaying not just work visas,
00:49tourist visas and student visas and their families. And we've got no clue who they are.
00:54Take a class action against the Home Office and sue them for failure, because it's absolutely disgusting.
01:02Great idea.
01:03Well, can we not? Because these people, they should, A, they should be on performance-related pay.
01:07That's what I think. But they're not doing the job that they're meant to be doing.
01:10Can this country, can we, as citizens, sue them?
01:14I think that it would be difficult. We've fought with difficulties now.
01:18I think a lot of people probably would, too. But I think, you know, we need to actually improve what they're doing.
01:23And, you know, one of the small things that I've said time and time again is that many, you know,
01:27when we travel, other countries check your passport when you come in and check your passport when you go out.
01:32We don't do that. We rely on this advanced passenger information,
01:35which clearly is lacking because the Home Office isn't even looking at it in this case.
01:39This is a massive problem. And, you know, you saw Keir Starmer talking in this infamous speech about an island of strangers.
01:45This is more like the island of the unknown, because we just don't know who is here.
01:49Yeah, David, you've obviously, you've lived abroad, Dubai, infamously.
01:54Do you, are you aware of any other country that behaves like this?
01:58I mean, I've travelled wildly, both when I ran the football club as well.
02:01And to be honest, only this one, you know, of the kind of the major countries around the world,
02:06the Western countries and the, you know, the countries like, even countries like the Middle East,
02:11all of them check you when you go in and when you go out.
02:13And obviously, if you look at the UAE, Dubai, for example, is a city.
02:17A lot of expats there, we know a lot of British people go there.
02:19You're checked when you go in, you're checked when you go out.
02:21And if you overstay, you're fined. And if you can keep doing it, you're in very big trouble.
02:26And they don't let you back. So, but we don't have that system.
02:28And it's not just, like I said, it's not just skilled workers, students, tourists.
02:33That's the easy way for people to get in.
02:35If they can come in that way and want to overstay, they don't need to worry about coming across the channel.
02:40I know, it's absolutely absurd, really. I don't know what to do about it.
02:43I mean, do you think that perhaps, and this is just my thoughts are,
02:47that the Home Office, people who work there, should be on performance-related pay?
02:51I think there needs to be a better system than there is at the moment.
02:53I mean, how you do that, whether it's performance-related.
02:55But, you know, we need to, they need to keep a track of, if someone's giving, there needs to be responsibility.
02:59So, if someone is giving permits to people, someone needs to have the responsibility to make sure that person is left at the end of the permit.
03:05So, why isn't that part of the process?
03:07You know, if you're looking at treatment of a, you know, if you look at a doctor and there's a treatment of something,
03:10you follow that process through.
03:12That's not being done.
03:13You know, they just assume people have left.
03:15And, of course, as we know, they're not leaving.
03:17But, you know, even after this study, nothing will be done.
03:19There'll be no changes.
03:20Because this is something, you know, I trained in law, you know, a long time ago.
03:24And I trained in a seat in immigration in the city of London law firm.
03:27Even then, there was immigration scams, you know, particularly with private universities doing so-called English courses,
03:35bringing a lot of people in from South London.
03:37It was a scam then, and it's only got worse.
03:39But people, some people might blame a lot of this on a lot of human rights lawyers as well,
03:44who seem to be defending these people if they do eventually get caught and asked to leave.
03:48I think, I mean, you're right to say there are some very dodgy lawyers that are doing things that they shouldn't be doing.
03:54But equally, if the law says that you can do these things,
03:57then it's for the government and the Home Office to change those laws and enforce them.
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