The newly-retired boss of Britain's Border Agency says that immigration to this country was out of control and that politicians have no idea 'who is here and who isn't'.
Tony Smith, who retired from the UK Border Force last month, blamed the problem on a surge of illegal immigrants who came to the country under Labour between 2000-2003.
He said: 'There was a huge influx and frankly I don't think we have ever recovered from that', and added: 'We just don't know who's here and who isn't.'
Speaking as ministers attempted to tackle a backlog of a third of a million cases, Mr Smith's said the problem began over a decade ago when immigrants flooded in.
He said that after they arrived, many of them then changed their names and were now undetectable by authorities.
In a forthright newspaper interview today, Mr Smith, who was awarded the CBE this year for the work he did on security at last summer's Olympics, said it was difficult for border officials to cope with such a huge influx of people, adding: 'There's little you can do other than take their details and pass them on.'
Blaming a huge influx to the UK on Labour ten years ago, former UKBA chief Tony Smith says immigration is out of control
His candid comments come days after Home Secretary Theresa May killed off the Border Agency after five years of catastrophic failure.
The agency behind a string of immigration scandals was cut in two and brought under Home Office control as Mrs May condemned the agency, set up under Labour, as suffering from a 'closed, secretive and defensive culture'.
The Home Secretary said the backlog of 320,000 cases would take 24 years to clear.
In today's interview with The Sun, Mr Smith said the immigration problems could have been avoided with the introduction of ID cards and passport finger-printing.
Theresa May has cut the Border Agency in two in an attempt to wrest back control over immigration
He said Mrs May's changes, which involve the Border Agency being split into two organisations, one to deal with visas and the other to track down illegal immigrants, would help fight the problem.
Labour's Keith Vaz, who chairs the Home Affairs Select Committee, has backed Mrs May in her tough stance on border control, saying the organisation was 'not fit for purpose'.
The UK Border Agency was created in 2008 to replace the Immigration and Nationality Directorate in the Home Office, a department which was already in chaos, with asylum claims piling up, and staff badly demoralised.
Theresa May killed it off last month after five years of failure under Lin Homer, the mandarin who led the UKBA from its inception.
Despite the crisis after crisis that typified the UKBA under her control, Ms Homer has now gone to a £180,000-a-year role with HM Revenue and Customs.
Tip of the iceberg: Illegal immigrants sleeping rough in a camp under the M4 near Heathrow
In an unprecedented speech in the House of Commons last month, Mrs May laid the blame for the agency’s failings squarely at Labour’s door, saying it was unable to cope with the number of migrants admitted by the last Government.
She indicated she would pass new laws to remove illegal immigrants and foreign criminals from Britain.
Mrs May told MPs: 'UKBA was given agency status to keep its work at an arm’s length from ministers. That was wrong. It created a closed, secretive and defensive culture.’
On April 1, the UKBA was divided into two sections, one to deal with immigration visas and one to deal with immigration law enforcement.
Mrs May said the latter department would have 'law enforcement at its heart and get tough on those who break our immigration laws'.
She said she was returning responsibility for controlling immigration to the heart of the Home Office after a backlog of 300,000 immigration cases built up which would take 24 years to work through.
Her no-nonsense moves came after a scathing report by the Home Affairs Select Committee which revealed ministers had not been given correct information about the scale of the problem for years and accused the Agency of incompetence and foot-dragging.
