By Jennifer Matthys – News emerged this week that ten border control staff have been caught harbouring illegal immigrants while supposedly protecting the UK.

In the past four years, 57 UK Border Agency (UKBA) workers committed offences directly relating to their jobs. Since 2008, ten of these staff members were found to have been protecting illegal immigrants. 22 of these crimes occurred in 2010.

A further 39 staff were disciplined for abuse of their position in relation to immigration misconduct.

Shockingly, only 23 of the 57 had been dismissed from the Agency, while six of them were let off completely.

This follows the news last year that passport checks were relaxed nearly 2,500 times at airports last summer.

Of the 57 caught, it has emerged that 32 of them were based in Greater London, seven in the South East, three in the Midlands, one in the North East and one in the North West.

Further documents show that thousands of passengers on private aircraft did not face passport checks at all. In one leaked email, a UKBA official at Durham Tees Valley Airport raised concerns with managers, complaining ‘we are not allowed to physically see the passengers arriving on private charter flights.

'It is creating a situation where we are not able to secure the borders as robustly as we would like, for no justifiable reason.’

We must be able to rely on those who protect our borders. The British National Party would increase funding to the UK Border Agency (UKBA) by withdrawing from all foreign wars so that body could secure our borders with increased resources and manpower — and without the burden of a politically correct watchdog burdening its every move.