How Scotland is new back door into Britain

ILLEGAL immigrants are paying up to £10,000 to be smuggled into Scotland through Ireland, it has been claimed.

People smugglers are avoiding the Channel crossing, where the UK concentrates much of its border security, and flying migrants from Paris to Dublin in order to take advantage of fewer border checks.

Migrants who have made the crossing claim they travelled with genuine EU passports obtained by the smugglers, which were not checked when crossing between Ireland and Britain.

After arriving in Dublin, they take a bus or a train to Belfast, where they can catch a ferry to Cairnryan, Wigtownshire, and then travel by land to London.

One Iranian immigrant who paid £10,000 to travel by the new route told the BBC that he was ‘not worried’ about being caught. He claimed that the Greek passport which he bought from the smugglers was not checked after going through customs in Dublin.

The unnamed migrant said: ‘This route from Dublin is still fresh and the police do not focus on it as they do at Gatwick or Heathrow.’ A Home Office spokesman said: ‘The UK and Irish governments work closely on border security.

‘Our existing joint programme of work with Ireland includes investment in border procedures, increased data sharing and use of passenger data.’

MPs said that Britain must shut the route immediately, demand stricter searches for ‘fake papers’ in Ireland and introduce a tightly controlled visa system for EU visitors after Brexit in March 2019.

Conservative Nigel Evans said: ‘The British Government have got to make absolutely certain that when people come into the UK from Ireland, proper identification has got to be shown.

‘There cannot be a back door into the UK.’

Former Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern is also worried by the problem.

He said at a Brexit conference last year: ‘You’re going to get people [coming] in here.

‘Let’s be honest about it. Wouldn’t you be an awful eejit if you were trying to get into the EU and you didn’t [try the route]?’. British MPs said that any route for illegal immigrants into Britain via Dublin or Ireland’s ports must be closed in Ireland and in France.

Mr Evans said he believed the post-Brexit visa regime would allow EU citizens free access to visit the UK.

But he added: ‘We must absolutely close down any routes that could lead to uncontrolled immigration into the UK.

‘We need to work with the Irish government because they should be concerned about any illegal immigration.’

Tory MP Peter Bone said illegal immigration routes could only be closed down by tackling ‘opportunist’ trafficking gangs who spotted loopholes in the borders.

‘It looks like these people are being trafficked by gangs,’ he said, adding: ‘What should happen is the National Crime Agency will target the gangs. Once it has become clear it is happening, it is easy to take down the gangs.

‘You don’t solve these problems by having lots of checks on the border.’