Sky News segment on visa overstayers tonight

[icannotbelievethis]

One woman who came here on a 3 month visitor visa 12 years ago, who is a “full time carer” for her sister.

One man who came here on a student visa which was then cancelled because he stopped attending his lectures, who has been here illegally for two years and works cash in hand. Therefore not paying tax or national insurance.

Wtf?! Why did Sky News interview them (and no doubt pay them!) and not turn up with the border force to get them sent home?! This is baffling

The woman who's been here 12 years mentioned that the home office know about her and text her on the 1st of every month so she can "check in". I'm guessing no one has any intentions of doing anything about it...

Because journalists are not obliged to grass on people they interview. They’d never get anyone to agree if so.

Not obliged, no. But surely they could have just done it? These are people here illegally.

Not the point of your thread, but people do not get paid to go on the news, not sure where you got that idea.

I find it hard to believe illegal immigrants came out to do these interviews just for fun

I work in this area. Immigration Enforcement will focus on people who have no current live claims and/or are removable.
If the HO knows about these people they will have some sort of claim grinding though the system. Asylum, human rights, modern slavery etc. Didn't see the programme but I guess carer woman will be appealing on grounds of long residency now.
Even if IE come across someone who doesn’t have a live case they just claim asylum. There’s not enough detention space and people can keep putting in fresh claims then disappearing again for years. It’s naive to think the HO can just put someone on a plane with the current legislation.
A typical file will be something like. Visa granted. Overstay. Asylum. Human rights. Family rights. Long residency.

Let’s make sure everyone stays exactly where they were born forever, right? Including the Brits who descend on my home country every summer, get paralytic, act like absolute idiots and leave the place looking like a complete dump.
Or you think you’re somehow special and other countries can’t wait to welcome you?

These are two very different issues. Tourism and illegal immigration are not comparable.

Time to change the rules then, surely? If you’re overstaying a visa that’s it. No asylum, no long term residency, nothing. You broke the law, you leave.

If journalists brought the police with them when they do interviews, nobody would ever talk to them. Even for this site, yours is one of the most clueless posts I've ever seen.

The people enforcing the laws don’t make them. The new Home Sec is trying to address the whole system but it will only work with massively increased detention space and public support of measures which will seem very unpalatable and in conflict with our tradition of human rights.
Most people recognise the issues but don’t want to see the sort of ICE measures the US is now resorting to.
Would there be support for refusing housing and schooling for children? Forcing couples apart? Detaining people for months or years when there is no prospect of removal? Sending sick people back to countries with no medical infrastructure?

Op, you are clearly clueless about journalism. The fact that you think you know better that people who have worked in that field for decades is what’s baffling.

So illegal immigrants now have a right to be interviewed on TV? It’s an absolute disgrace. Sky News was in the presence of criminals and they just shrugged and encouraged them to stay.

I think we have the same view on this as a whole. However, I think if journalists start to grass on all their sources of information & interviewers they’d soon find themselves without people to get either from.

So? Maybe they could go back to reporting actual news. Not advertising to people across the world that if they come here they can just disappear and be illegal for life.

What would happen to the poor lady with a brain tumour if her sister leaves? The UK has not had proper immigration controls for many years.

You call it tourism, I call it vandalism. When Brits roll into my country, ignore our laws and customs, how exactly is that any different from what you’re accusing ‘illegal migrants’ of? The only real distinction you’re making is the one that suits your argument.

You're very naive about journalism. Haven't you heard of reporter privilege?
Have you not seen indepth reports of journalists working with major criminals? People who sre in the criminal underworld who are involved in murder, drug and human trafficking. Not just some people who have carried out the henious crime of overstaying their visas.

I use a lot of taxi drivers for work and I’ve met quite a few who originally came as tourists. They got off a plane at Heathrow and just never bothered to go home.

Or, in the case of the caregiver, the government could make her a legal resident since she has a sister here who needs her and is saving her local authority a fortune by being her carer. There are also humanitarian grounds for both, in that the government should have caught them and booted them out before they made their lives here, if they were so bothered about it. They had records of them from their visas and I'm sure could have found them. It's the government's fault if they didn't notice that people with visas hadn't left. They could easily check flight lists.

icannot have you never watched the news or a documentary before? They interview criminals all the the time. Many of them are far more dangerous than these people over staying a visa.

Well you can find it hard all you like, but people don't get paid to go on the news.

🤦🏻‍♀️

Why are you watching it if you think it’s not actual news? GB News is available.

OP seems to have zero clues about journalistic integrity.

I think you’d find that reporting “actual news” and doing proper journalistic investigation would rather rely on people trusting that they could speak to them without the police being involved.