As Victor Meldrew would say " l don't believe it "

Tell me l'm not the only one that thinks the UK is going down the plug-hole.

Immigrant spot checks: Equality watchdog investigatesImmigration raids on 1 August 2013 Immigration enforcement officers arrested 139 suspected illegal immigrants on Thursday

Immigration spot checks at railway stations across the country are to be investigated by the equality watchdog for possible unlawful discrimination.

This follows reported complaints that the checks, carried out on Thursday, targeted people based on ethnicity.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission said it would examine the powers used and their "justification".

Immigration Minister Mark Harper denied the checks used racial profiling. He said they were based on intelligence.

A spokesman for the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) said it would also "ask questions about the extent to which the Home Office complied with its public sector equality duty" when vans were sent around London encouraging illegal immigrants to "go home".

As well as the spot checks at transport hubs, there were raids on workplaces on Thursday.

A Home Office spokesman said there were a total of 160 arrests, 21 of which were at stations in London.

The other 139 suspected illegal immigrants and rogue employers were arrested at locations across the country including London, Durham, Manchester, Wales and Somerset.

'Reasonable suspicion'

The Home Office said there had been 228 immigration street operations since 2008 and there were 9,000 arrests in the past year for suspected immigration abuse.

An EHRC spokesman said it was writing to the Home Office about the checks at transport hubs.

He said the EHRC "will be examining the powers used and the justification for them, in order to assess whether unlawful discrimination took place".

I must be missing something here,seems pretty obvious to me. I used to get stopped and searched going into football grounds because I was wearing my teams colours.Skin colour and facial features would seem a pretty good starting point in my book.How or where  else would the police/border agencies start.Perhaps you would rather ask them to come forward at their own convenience......

Quite agree, but it's bloody good start.

Bob,calm down....it's not just the UK that has this problem.Most of the European countries do.

As an immigrant in this country, which I have chosen to live in, for a better life, how could I even attempt at commentating on someone else wishing to do the same.
Passports and visas are a relatively new condition to travelling. The various politicians who passed the immigration laws are the ones who suddenly made it illegal to travel a world that we all live in and fundamentally have a right to live anywhere in it.
"illegal" immigrants do not claim dole or other monetary gains and invariably live in squalor and work for peanuts, doing jobs that the 'indigenous' people won't do.

Can I bring in to this, all the immigrants legal or not ,who move to various countries and do not want to conform with that countries rules, and laws, and actually hate and despise the residents of that country to the extent of terrorism.
This is happening here in the UK, like it or not  "FACT"
I totally agree with Jack,that as humans, we should all be free to move to wherever we want, but there does need to be correct control,s of who is allowed in and who is not.

Seconds away round 3   

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But thankfully made them a better country for which most were extremely grateful.We can thank the Victorians,William Sheakespere,the armed forces and the British judicial system for that.