London, Sep 10 (Inditop.com) British anti-terror border controls were described as “wholly inadequate” after a newspaper revealed that only 29 out of 66,000 Pakistani immigration applicants were interviewed by British officials.
Visa checks on immigrants from Pakistan were condemned as a sham after the Daily Mail said official figures showed that just 29 out of 66,000 applicants were interviewed by officials since Britain put in place a supposedly rigorous system last October.
The British Home Office set up a ‘hub and spoke’ scheme to prevent terrorists, extremists, illegals and criminals from entering Britain, with plans to scrutinise candidates’ document in the Middle East before they travelled to Britain.
Under the new arrangements, visa applications by Pakistani and Afghan nationals are checked for fraud and forgery in Islamabad and are then passed to a processing centre in Abu Dhabi.
But, the Daily Mail reported Thursday, just one in a thousand of those granted visas was actually interviewed face to face.
The opposition Conservative Party’s Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling said: “There are very real concerns that the system is being abused by people who have no right to come to the UK.”
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has said 75 percent of terrorist incidents in Britain have a Pakistani link – a claim denied by Pakistan.
Pakistan is classified as a ‘high risk’ country for visas by the British Home Office.
