LONDON: Britain's home office is inquiring into newspaper reports that visas were granted to female immigrants in return for sexual favours.
The Sun newspaper had published a report quoting a former employee at Lunar House immigration centre in Croydon, south London, that the centre's workers gave visas to women asylum seekers who agreed to have sex with them. Those who refused or who were not good looking were rejected, the paper said.
Home office minister Tony McNulty said in a statement Tuesday that these are serious allegations and there will be a full-fledged investigation.
The paper said the former employee, Anthony Pamnani, worked for the administration department at the Lunar House Centre, which handles nearly 300,000 visa applications from asylum seekers in a year. He cited the instance of a girl who came in and revealed how an administration officer from the centre had visited her flat and they slept together. "She got indefinite leave to stay," he told the paper.
He also said Brazilian girls got preferred status and were mostly allowed to stay twice as long as their male counterparts. Those considered good looking would be seen straightaway while others queued for hours, he was quoted by the newspaper.
Pamnani,23, alleged that in some cases vital security checks on immigrants were not carried out. And in "many cases" passports of immigrations were not verified for previous convictions, mainly because the staff were too lazy to walk a few yards to use a computer reader.
He told the paper that he resigned from his post after four years in disgust at the behaviour. He also talked about instructions given by the immigration officers to allow more immigrants from eastern Europe at the expense of those from India.
McNulty said he was confident the immigration staff were professional and carried out their jobs with integrity.
Keith Best, of the Immigration Advisory Service, a service organisation helping refugees felt decisions on visas should be made by a body independent of government.
Posted
on : Tue, 03 Jan 2006 13:55 GMT | Politics News
By : Mark Richardson
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