Immigration Undercover Panorama

Tonight on Panorama: On the hunt for the ghost people. More than

half a million migrants living beneath the radar in the UK.

Some come here for protection but end up destitute on our streets.

Even living in gave -- graveyards. Some come to work but get trapped

in poverty and have no idea how to return home. This is no place for

anybody to live. It absolutely stinks. Others have been in the

hands of the authorities. But they were simply let go. You have

stabbed somebody, been to prison here, it been in immigration

detention centres. Can you tell me why the authorities allow you to be

here? And we secretly film a criminal gang which smuggles our

most desperate illegals out of the This is the first glimpse many

people get of the United Kingdom. It has got one of the toughest

borders in the world to cross. Many people are coming here because they

need protection. They are fleeing war and persecution in their own

country. But many more coming simply to live and work beneath the

radar. On the French side of the Channel, migrants trying to board

lorries heading for the UK. Just down the road, a British checkpoint,

on French soil. They used probes to test for heart beats and to sniff

the air for signs of life. There are heat detectors and sniffer dog,

too. If there is anybody on here, the heart monitor should pick it up.

They should do but it is luck of the draw as to whether you stop

that lorry in the first place, really. This lorry is registering

some movement. It is an anxious moment. They never know what to

expect from a desperate migrants. We have got three in here. They say

they are from Afghanistan, the country that produces more refugees

than anywhere else. The police have got a feeling that these men have

tried before. They are smiling and easy, chatting to each other. There

are repeated attempts to get in. If they fail this time, they may just

be released and have another go. Most of those they find are

economic migrants. If they get through, they have got a foothold

in the UK and might try to lose themselves in the system three

years. But there are legitimate asylum seekers, too. I know. I have

travelled with them. Four years ago I followed hundreds of migrants on

one of the most dangerous migration routes in the world, from sub-

Saharan Africa to Europe. They travel thousands of miles, largely

on foot, cross the desert. As many as one in four di on the journey.

From the North coast of Africa they board overcrowded boats to cross

the Mediterranean. Only a small number are targeting the UK. And

only a fraction of those received asylum. How many people come to the

UK to claim asylum? Not half as many as people think, actually. As

to the number of asylum seekers coming to the UK would fit just

about in the Olympic Aquatics Centre. So about 25,000 people. It

is roughly 40%. If you compare that to be global refugee situation,

only 2% of the world's refugees are in Europe. This man tried for

asylum in the UK after fleeing Afghanistan five years ago. But he

was refused. Rather than return home, he went underground. Living

rough in Nottingham, surviving of charity from people at his local

mosque. He is among tens of thousands of failed asylum seekers

who have gone missing. How did you get across the water to Great

Britain? That is very difficult, to get through British security.

I know. You just get yourself under the lorry. So you were hanging

beneath the lorry? Not inside it but beneath it? You come to the

checkpoint, and we just crossed. The checkpoint was looking for us

in sight. I was underneath. They did not know I was there. Zarif

says his father was murdered for political reasons in Afghanistan

and that he was then jailed but escaped. He came to the UK and was

refused asylum. In the end, he was given the standard 21 days to leave

the country. Instead he went underground, cutting himself off

from all state support, becoming homeless. I cannot see anywhere

that you could have slept around here. Over there, they're there is

a quiet place. -- there is a quiet place. In here? I used to sleepier.

-- sleep here. How long? Three years. Can I look in? That is your

water bottle? Yes. This is my life. If you would like to stay with us,

you can. You are inviting me to stay for a while? I could not stay

for one night. A quarter of all asylum rejections are overturned on

appeal. That means the initial decision in those cases was wrong.

Zarif is gathering more evidence to reapply for asylum. Refugee groups

say that the system often forces strong case is underground. I think

it tells you everything you need to know about the fear, the genuine

fear people have of returning home. We see clients every day that are

prepared to take a prostitution rather than return. Prepare to take

up criminal activity rather than return. In some cases prefer to

take their own lives rather than return home. Zarif says that

nothing would have turned into crime. While he fights his case, he

is being looked after by a charity. If he fails this time, he said he

will either return to the ghost community, or commit suicide.

really tired of life. I don't want to stay any more like this. I want

a better, nice lifelike other normal people. But others still see

the UK as a soft touch. This is Kakengi from the Democratic

Republic of Congo. He knows that separating bogus claims from

genuine ones is a test for any system. He lives in London, beneath

the radar, emerging for food and clothing after Red Cross -- at the

Red Cross shelter. It is nice. How often do you come? Normally every

Tuesday. I tried to make a difference in my life. Kakengi says

that he is a loyal back home and a special adviser to the former

President, until 2001. -- a lawyer. It did not want to come to beg or

to be homeless, but the immigration system put me in this situation,

humiliated me. Honestly it is a disgraceful situation. He uses the

centre for washing and keeping clean. He says that things went

wrong for him when the President was assassinated and he was accused

of involvement in the plot. He says he was jailed and escaped, and then

claimed asylum in the UK. He was refused, and for nearly a decade

has learned the craft of being a ghost. Now I am becoming very wise.

When I enter one street, my eyes are very sharp now, they look very

far left and right, to see a police It turned out Kakengi was not being

straight with us. The authorities describe him as an asylum shopper.

They say that he arrived from Madrid a decade ago, on a Dutch

passport belonging to someone else. Then he claimed asylum, failed. He

turned up in Ireland, claimed there, failed. Returned to Britain, and

took his place to judicial review twice. It cost the taxpayer

thousands. In the end he was deported back to Ireland. Case

closed. The UK Border Agency had no idea that he had managed to break

back into Britain. We caught up with him again in London. You have

not been straight with us, have you? You have not been entirely

honest with us about your background. How come? You had two

judicial reviews, didn't you? The judge said one was an abuse of

process and the other was totally without merit. That cost the

taxpayer money. What did you do after that? You are sent back to

Ireland and then he vanished again. Actually nobody knew you were here.

The Home Office knew. They had no idea. They know because my case is

still on-going. How come I have a solicitor? I don't know, but the

Home Office does not know that you are here. This is what they will

say. If you try and pull the wool over my eyes, it is not fair

because you are clogging up the system for people that are

legitimate asylum seekers, trying to play it by the book. We went to

his solicitors. They failed to respond. We have got an asylum

shopper on the programme. When we found him and checked in with the

Home Office, you have no idea that he was even here. What does that

tell us? It tells you that it is possible. We do not catch every

single person that tried to enter the country clandestinely. We are

working with our European colleagues. We make sure people are

fingerprinted, we check to see if they have entered the European

Union in another country. If they have, we can return them to the

country where they first entered. But part of the problem is with the

UK Border Agency itself and its backlog of 300,000 cases. Not only

that, the Chief Inspector of borders and immigration has been

examining cases going back more than a decade. A report was

published two months ago. They found cases that were considered to

be closed simply because the applicants could not be traced.

They found a backlog of more than 100,000 pieces of unopened mail.

Because of all that, they found there were people who had acquired

rights to stay in the UK who should have faced removal. But the

majority of ghosts are not failed asylum seekers. They are people who

came to the UK to work illegally. Many arrive on visas, as students

or tourists, but do not leave, becoming overstayers who find work

in the grey economy. Mr Ahmed was issued with a student visa. It was

20th April, 2010, and it was fired in till March, 2011. -- and valid

until. He is an overstayer. The UK Border Agency is playing catch-up

and it is playing blind. There are no exit checks in the UK so it is

difficult to know who has left the country and who has stayed behind.

Today's target is a drinks warehouse. Many of the workers are

Indian and Pakistani nationals. If they are overstayers, at least

there is a record of them, fingerprints and photo ID to check.

As soon as he gives his fingerprint, you should know whether he is an

overstayer and who he is? Yes, we have enough information on him to

find out. Some foreign students are allowed to work for limited hours.

But for some, enrollment in a college is just a ruse. In 2009, of

all the non-EU students who came to the UK, it is estimated around one

in six work here illegally instead. You say you are sick but to turn up

for work and you do not go to college. What is the name of your

college? Student fees abuse has become so serious that the

Government has recently banned more than 500 colleges from taking non-

EU students. And they are rolling out a programme to interview high

risk candidates face to face, to root out fees abuse. -- Visa abuse.

Some of these men are not pretending to be students. They are

Some of these men are not pretending to be students, they're

just overstayers. You were refused leave to enter, OK. You were given

temporary admission into the UK and you were due to leave several

months ago and you're still here. So in light of that fact, you are

now under arrest. Today, they arrest seven. But other overstayers

sink into a criminal underclass and begin exploiting each other in the

In East London, this woman, out on a shopping trip, is an Indian

national who's become a madam, running a prostitution racket. Her

name's Amarjit Kaur - known as Phabi. Her girls are largely

overstayers. We're sending in our undercover researcher, Ruby, to ask

The madam is suspicious - Ruby is a British national, not from the

ghost community. But her fake back story stands up. Eventually the

madam agrees to meet in Ilford and We'd already spoken to other girls

who have worked for Mrs Kaur. Ushma is from north India - she came to

work as a waitress. And how did you get here? I came here on a student

visa that I got from an agent. did you have any intention, really,

of coming here to study? No, I only came here to work and earn money.

She ended up being exploited by her own community - something she's

ashamed of. How many clients do you see each week? Sometimes it's two

or three per day, sometimes five or six per day, sometimes only one per

day, sometimes none. But in a week Ushma never wanted to be a

prostitute. She says the economic downturn left her no choice and she

sends most of her earnings home. Do your parents know what you do?

they think I trained on a course. They think I work at a beauty

In Ilford, Mrs Kaur, the madam, is talking business with our

It was time to confront her. Mrs Kaur, hello, Paul Kenyon from BBC

Television. You exploit young vulnerable illegals in this country.

You exploit them to be prostitutes, But this young woman here - you

were just offering her work as a Mrs Kaur has been in the business

for four years, hidden within the Ushma is about to move on, but the

only people she knows here are, themselves, illegals - what they

call "fugis". What proportion of your clients are here illegally

themselves? The majority of my clients are illegals, the majority

are fugis. There's too many of them And we'd found some who've been

involved in more serious criminality. And who the

authorities know about, but have, So this is Ilford, east of London,

and just over here in these derelict garages, which are full of

really nasty rubbish, is where some This is Kuldeep. He hid in a lorry

to get here a decade ago, and worked, illegally, on building

sites, but his economic dream also turned sour. Like many, he fell

into drink and drugs, risking his I want to go home because I haven't

managed to get myself settled here. I've been away a long time and now

there is absolutely no work. It's painful and it's better to go home

now, it's better there. It's pointless destroying my life here.

Remarkably, Kuldeep has been in the hands of the authorities many times.

He's emblematic of the lack of joined-up thinking between police,

immigration and prisons. I've been to prison three times and each time

after serving my sentence, the immigration people took me. You've

stabbed somebody, you've been to prison here, you've been in

immigration detention centres. Can you tell me why the authorities

still allow you to be here? That's what I don't understand - why the

The Home Office says this is unacceptable and that a London-

based scheme is about to be rolled out nationally to help police and

immigration work more effectively on removals. We met quite a few

people here who say they want to return to India. It's impossible to

know how much effort they've really put into that, but what I do know

is that they have come into contact with the authorities, and the

The number of migrants living beneath the radar in the UK is

estimated at more than 600,000. But others with money, who arrived on a

criminal network, can now leave on one, too. Panorama's discovered a

hidden travel service, smuggling illegals OUT of the UK. You might

be wondering why they don't just hand themselves in to the

authorities and ask to be sent home. Well, they've spent so much time

and money getting to Europe, they might not want to go all the way

back, but have a crack at Spain or Italy to look for work. Then

there's another sort - people who've committed crimes and are

We contacted a smuggling gang which claimed to be running up to three

trips a week out of the UK. We arranged to meet. The person we

want them to smuggle out is me. We've got a meeting coming up and

this is the difficult bit where I morph onto an Eastern European. --

into an East European. My story is I'm Chris from Molodva, which is

outside the EU. I'm working here illegally with no passport or

papers and I need to escape the UK. I'm waiting with a colleague who's

got an in with the gang. Then one of them arrives on foot. He says

he's called Munga and used to be a He tells us I'll be smuggled out

They smuggle them on cross channel ferries - there are fewer checks on

Just 1,500 pounds. OK. He needs to call someone higher up the chain to

So that's it, seven o'clock tomorrow and the good news is that

Munga, the person we have just met, is going to come with us in the car.

So we're at the lorry seven o'clock It's crunch time - today I'm due to

be smuggled out of the country. We set off in a car to meet the

people-smuggling lorry. My team are keeping a close watch from a chase

vehicle behind. My fellow passenger says he came here to work illegally.

But now, it seems, soft-touch One of the things we do with our

colleagues in other, both EU countries and non-EU countries, is

work closely internationally to try to crack down on these gangs who

are committing organised immigration crime and preying on

We drive for two hours through the Finally we are directed to a

housing estate, but the lorry's not there. They want to transfer me to

Hi there, what is your name? Thank The ringleader tells us to waitand

We're not prepared to hand over any money. Our chase vehicle caught up

with us. It's time to make our move. Munga, from BBC Televsion, you help

smuggle people out of the country, don't you, out of the UK? You are

part of a gang that smuggles people out. No, no. Isn't that right? A

lot of money smuggling people out of the country. No. Many, many

amounts of money. No money. take it too, and the other man.

Organise to get people across and leave the country.

Our investigation found three other gangs offering illegals a secret

A few days after we filmed at the garages, the authorities moved in

to clear them and move the illegals on. But perhaps still not enough

joined-up thinking between immigration and police. What is

your status to be in the country? He's illegal, he's illegal, he's

got status. But you are happy to remain in England or do you want to

be moved? They all want to go back. Kuldeep, the man who'd been in

prison, disappeared again. The authorities are now helping the

others with their repatriation to India. Zarif has been picked up by

immigration and is awaiting removal from UK. The immigration raid ended

with three student overstayers being removed back to India. -- two

Two more were detained pending removal. But in the end, those

living destitute in the UK's ghost community may well decide they've