James Slack, Home Affairs Editor for the Daily Mail
Thousands of immigrants conned their way into Britain by pretending to be skilled workers - when they actually came to do menial jobs such as working in kebab shops.
Immigrants were able to get visas for supposedly skilled jobs thanks to the connivance of rogue employers.
One created a post for a migrant of ‘sales and business development manager’ - for a small high street kebab shop.
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Other ruses included fast food shops recruiting ‘press and PR managers’ and a newsagent and off-licence saying it needed a full-time HR manager when it only had three staff.
Officials are now in the process of rounding up and deporting thousands of foreign workers.
Ministers say they were able to exploit ‘incompetence’ in a supposedly tough points-based system introduced by the previous government in 2008.
The so-called Tier Two of Labour’s immigration system allowed people from outside the EU to get a visa only if they had been offered a ‘skilled’ job in the UK that could not be filled by a British or EU worker.
Employers were required to obtain approval from the Home Office to sponsor migrants, but checks were far from thorough, only looking to see whether the business was trading.
Employers and migrants could therefore work together to cheat the system, with employers sometimes receiving payments worth thousands of pounds.
The rules have since been tightened; officials now scrutinise the roles the migrants are supposedly coming to fill, the business’s turnover and tax arrangements, and, crucially, how many people it employs.
The rate of visas refused under the new rules has rocketed from less than 2 per cent to 37 per cent, suggesting abuse of the old regime was rampant - with potentially tens of thousands slipping through the net.
Checks have now been carried out on historic files and up to 2,500 migrants who conned their way into the country are in the process of being sent home.
Last night Tory immigration minister James Brokenshire criticised Labour for their open door immigration policy and the ‘incompetence of the UK Border Agency in administering it’.
He added: ‘Our reforms are cracking down on abuse... We are building an immigration system that works for British nationals and legitimate migrants and is tough on those who flout the rules.’
In October, two men were jailed for fronting a scam immigration sponsorship firm called Techsense, which claimed it was recruiting management level migrants for IT jobs, when, in fact, they were working in fast food restaurants and supermarkets.
The judge criticised the now-defunct UK Border Agency for granting the Pakistani-run business a sponsor licence in 2008 and for its failure to monitor the firm afterwards.
The UKBA gave 117 certificates of sponsorship to Techsense over three years. Of those, 50 led to visas and it was estimated more than 120 family members were granted additional visas.
Rashid Ghauri and Ali Junejo, who ran the scam, netted at least £500,000 by selling the work permits for £3,500-£4,500 each.
Under Labour, there was also widespread abuse of the separate Highly Skilled Migrant Programme, which later became Tier One of the points system.
This route was supposed to allow the brightest migrants to come to the UK to look for a job even if they had no advance offer.
At least 30 per cent of Tier One migrants were later found to work in low-skilled roles such as stacking shelves, driving taxis or working as security guards. Others did not have a job at all.