Are immigration controls dysfunctional?

For many Britons, the UK feels overcrowded. But does our hunger for cheap labour make a solution to high levels of immigration impossible? Emily Hohler reports.

A gap has opened between the government's declared policy on immigration and what actually happens on our borders, says The Sunday Telegraph. The Tories promised to cut immigrant numbers from around 250,000 a year to less than 100,000. The coalition agreed that a migration cap would be put in place and the number of non-EU migrants reduced. "So far, immigration has remained at roughly the same level."

It now appears civil servants have been "quietly sabotaging the government's plans". Brodie Clark, one of the most senior officials at the UK Border Agency (UKBA), has been suspended, along with two other managers, pending an investigation that an authorisation from the home secretary, Theresa May, to waive some of the more stringent border checks had been taken beyond what was intended. May insists it is not her fault, says The Daily Telegraph, but it remains to be seen whether the investigation will exonerate her.

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Emily Hohler
Politics editor

Emily has worked as a journalist for more than thirty years and was formerly Assistant Editor of MoneyWeek, which she helped launch in 2000. Prior to this, she was Deputy Features Editor of The Times and a Commissioning Editor for The Independent on Sunday and The Daily Telegraph. She has written for most of the national newspapers including The Times, the Daily and Sunday Telegraph, The Evening Standard and The Daily Mail, She interviewed celebrities weekly for The Sunday Telegraph and wrote a regular column for The Evening Standard. As Political Editor of MoneyWeek, Emily has covered subjects from Brexit to the Gaza war.

Aside from her writing, Emily trained as Nutritional Therapist following her son's diagnosis with Type 1 diabetes in 2011 and now works as a practitioner for Nature Doc, offering one-to-one consultations and running workshops in Oxfordshire.