Immigration body in £8m PR spend

The government agency charged with tackling illegal immigration spent nearly £8 million on public relations last year.

Figures uncovered by the Tories showed the UK Border Agency's budget for publicity and promotion was £7.8 million in the financial year 2008/9 - including £2 million for marketing and £3.3 million for advertising and promotion.

Shadow immigration minister Damian Green said: "In a crisis you can guarantee that New Labour will put spin before substance. So at a time when our borders are open, and confidence in the immigration system is low, what do they do? They spend millions on advertising, and increase the size of what they call the "professional communications community".

A study by the London School of Economics suggests that the number of people living in the UK without permission is much higher than previously thought. The last official estimate of illegal immigration, a Home Office report in 2001, put the figure at 430,000.

Because of the nature of illegal immigration, accurately charting numbers is difficult. The LSE team said the figure lies somewhere between 524,000 and 947,000, with a "midpoint" figure of 725,000.

I’d love to know how LSE worked this out. I know they’re a clever bunch over there. Maybe they have an immigration theory or equation (like the guy from Numb3rs) that they use. Or maybe they count how many people work, as cleaners, in kebab shops, in curry houses, in Chinese restaurants, on building sites etc in a certain area and multiply it by a random number!

If you asked someone to guess how many matches were in a box, or sweets in a jar would you accept “Er, between 1 and 100, with a midpoint of 50”?

They don’t know exactly how many illegal immigrants there are, so why not just say, “Sorry, we don’t know.”

A spokesman for UKBA said: "Publicity campaigns are important means to help the UK Border Agency deter illegal working and smuggling and promote legal compliance by businesses and travellers. We are committed to keeping the public informed.”

What type of advertising do they use?

TV advertising

You can imagine the actors speaking slowly and loudly:

“PLEASE…DON’T…COME…TO…THE…UK…UNLESS…IT’S…FOR…LE..GI..TI…MATE…REASONS!”

Posters

“Please don’t come to the UK unless it’s for legitimate reasons”.

Written in what language? A proportion of the immigrants that are allowed to stay here legally can’t speak or read the language properly. In fact a UN survey found that 1 in 5 adults in the UK are illiterate, that’s nearly 7 million adults (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/811832.stm).

Leafleting

This faces the same problem that posters do with regards to literacy levels.

But quite ironic as it would probably be the illegal immigrants giving out the leaflets as “…no self respecting Englishman is going to give out leaflets!”…especially when he can’t read the leaflet or the road signs to deliver them!

I worked with long term unemployed people in Tottenham, North London. Some of my clients claimed that they could not work more than a mile or two away from their homes as they could not read the road signs to get back!

Why don’t they spend the millions on adverts telling people how shit it is in the UK?

In a list of 183 countries the UK did not do too well:

They are joint 17th in the quality of life index; immigrants have to go through 7 of the countries above the UK in order to actually get there (depending on where they’re coming from obviously!)

The average temperature is 9.7C.

Angling is the most popular participation sport, with 3.3 million regularly taking part.

Life expectancy in the UK is 79.4 years; only 22nd in the list.

There are 4.2 hospital beds per 1,000 people – beaten by Slovakia, Cuba and Belarus.


I'm going to start my own advertising campaign (FREE OF CHARGE)-

It’s cold, boring, you’re not going to live very long and if you do get sick or stabbed you've got more chance of getting a hospital bed in Belarus!

Why choose the UK?