The Hazards of illegal immigration to the UK

Nigerians are everywhere in the world. Our proclivity to global itinerancy, I suspect, is born out of nature and economics. By nature, we love to scan our immediate and outer environments with the ultimate objective of improving ourselves. Even before our country becomes what it is now, our people had traversed the globe seeking the proverbial Golden Fleece in places far and wide. Thus it can safely be said that our forebears who travelled to Europe and America in the early to mid 20th century did so simply to attain quality Western education and having achieved this they promptly came back to Nigeria, where commensurate jobs were waiting for them.The second reason for playing ‘Andrew’ is economics. It is clear that despite {or perhaps because of } the country’s abundance of human and natural resources, our successive rulers have seemingly contrived to snatch defeat from the jaw of economic victory and the country has remained a perpetual work-in-progress. The Nigerian people, with no hope of a better tomorrow have thus been voting with their feet and migrating to all sorts of countries {as an aside a colleague of mine recently seconded to the Afghanistan Ministry of Justice relates of presence of a considerable community of Nigerians in Afghanistan!}.Nigerians have been migrating to the UK for decades. However lately, there have been changes in the legal and political climates in the UK that those seeking to migrate to England and work illegally need to think twice before they did so. In the late 1980s and throughout 1990s, as a result of liberalisation of the British economy by Lady Thatcher, {which was sustained by the New Labour government since 1997}, the British economy has been very buoyant and was out-performing the economies of the Euro-zone. This has generated job opportunities in all facets of the labour market, especially such jobs the natives were not particularly enamoured of. As a result of this, there was a laissez faire attitude towards migration {including illegal ones}. Nigerians who came to the UK during this period could thus easily obtained works using false/forged documentations and subsequently normalise and regularise their stays. This is no longer the case.The UK Identity Card Act 2006 was promulgated to check the incidents of identity thefts. However its ambit covers those who are in possession of false or fraudulent identification documents. The Act provides for two separate offences: possession of false identity document with the intention to deceive and simple possession of false identity document.Section 25{1&2} provides that:‘{1} It is an offence for a person with the requisite intention to have in his possession or under his control—(a) an identity document that is false and that he knows or believes to be false;(b) an identity document that was improperly obtained and that he knows or believes to have been improperly obtained; or(c) an identity document that relates to someone else.(2) The requisite intention for the purposes of subsection (1) is—(a) the intention of using the document for establishing registrable facts about himself; or(b) the intention of allowing or inducing another to use it for establishing, ascertaining or verifying registrable facts about himself or about any other person (with the exception, in the case of a document within paragraph (c) of that subsection, of the individual to whom it relates).’Section 25{5}{a-c}, provides that:‘It is an offence for a person to have in his possession or under his control, without reasonable excuse—(a) an identity document that is false;(b) an identity document that was improperly obtained;(c) an identity document that relates to someone else; or(d) any apparatus, article or material which, to his knowledge, is or has been specially designed or adapted for the making of false identity documents or to be used in the making of such documents.’It can be clearly seen that the sections have been widely drafted to encompass such practice as using someone else genuine identity documents as well as using plainly forged documents. The offence under section 25{1} is committed if the suspect presents such documents to anyone with the intention of inducing that person to avail them of a service. Thus Mr A presents a genuine international passport {or any other form of identification documents} belonging to Mr B {probably because they look alike} to a bank with the intention of inducing the bank into opening an account for himself {Mr A}, the offence has been committed. Such practice was/is not unusual amongst illegal immigrants in the UK. The maximum punishment for a conviction under section 25[1} of the Act is 10 years custodial sentence. The offence under section 25{5} {the simple possession} is committed if the suspect is found to be in possession of such document. Thus, if using our scenario above, Mr A was in possession of any of the above documents and was subject to a routine stop and search by the police and the document{s} was found on him, he is guilty of the offence and could be sent to two years imprisonment.Prior to the promulgation of the Identity Card Act, people found to be in possession of such identification documents were simply repatriated to their countries without having to face criminal trials. This of course is no longer the case as such people now face criminal prosecution and almost inevitable imprisonment. To make matter worse such convicted people are subsequently deported to their countries after they have served their terms of imprisonment since the sentencing courts almost always recommend those people for deportation. Under the UK law, foreign nationals convicted of imprisonable offence are liable to be removed from the UK after conclusion of their custodial sentence. Talk of double jeopardy!This writer knows as a matter of fact that hundreds {perhaps thousands} of Nigerians have been affected by this new law. The fact that most of the key cases that have gone to Criminal appellate Courts in the UK in this area of law relate to Nigerian names are indicative of how the net of this Act has caught many Nigerians. In the case of R-v-Kolawole {2006}2 Cr.App.R{S} 14, the defendant, who was initially arrested for a traffic offence, was found to be in possession of forged passport. Even though he was previously of good character, he was nevertheless sentenced to 18 months custody. Similarly, in the case of R-v-Adebayo {2007} EWCA Crim 878, the defendant went to an employment agency and produced two documents, a national insurance card and a Nigerian passport which were fakes. Mr Adebayo claimed that he had entered the United Kingdom about 10 years earlier and had lost his Nigerian passport. He had paid £2,500 for the two false documents which he had produced. He was sentenced to Sentenced 2 -year custody, although this was reduced to reduce to 15 months on appeal. It is needless to say that both defendants were recommended for deportation.Those two cases have become the guidance cases in UK courts for sentencing people accused of breaching the provisions of the Act. Hundreds of Nigerians are languishing in various UK jails awaiting deportation after serving their criminal sentence. What started out as journey to economic liberation and good life have suddenly become painful existence of nightmarish proportion for these unfortunate people. Ordinarily decent and hardworking people have now acquired criminal convictions for, at worst their desperation to escape from the inequities and insecurities at home. The convenient thing is to blame the UK for the harshness of its law, but that will miss the point. The real culprits are the successive leaders of Nigeria who have made staying at home so hostile, so hopeless that Nigerians are ready to migrate to such bastion of prosperity and tranquillity as Afghanistan! Whilst the country remain cocooned in the quagmire of high unemployment, entrenched poverty and decaying infrastructures, it is difficult to advise people not to seek better life elsewhere. My advice to Nigerians seeking to come to the UK is to ensure that they seek impassioned and objective advice before spending their hard earned money on a trip into the unknown.