It is time that the European Union got tough on people traffickers, harsh prison sentences, total assets removal and permanent EU deportation

Dear All

Illegal immigration is a problem in the UK with documentary evidence that people trafficking is big business.

Khac Dan Nguyen is a 37-year-old from Vietnam who was the mastermind behind getting his countrymen across the English Channel from France.

He was so successful that he was illegally earning up to £25,000 a month.

The profits for this type of crime are vast, potentially there are thousands of illegal immigrants who willing to pay the £2,000 fee for safe passage.

The proceeds of his activities allowed him to build himself a 'large and beautiful' seaside house.

The way that Khac Dan Nguyen operated was classic smuggling using the well-worn path to using LGV Lorries to smuggle people into Britain.

Most be don’t see illegal immigration for what it is, it is a crime but it is to some extent treated as a game of cat and mouse.

Custom and immigration catch the people and then they get turned loose only to try again in another lorry.

Khac Dan Nguyen for trafficking 62 illegal immigrants into Britain was jailed for three years.

That is far too lenient.

The punishment should be more draconian in nature such as 15 years, complete recovery of assets and permanent deportation from the European Union.

Nguyen at his trail claimed to be a ‘humane smuggler interested in people’s happiness’.

Well we should be concerned with his personal unhappiness which 15 years, no parole would bring.

Nguyen said:

‘I am very family orientated and wanted to help my loved ones out,’ he told the Tribunal de Grande Instance in the northern port of Dunkirk.

Nguyen treats smuggling like a game.

Wire taps on Nguyen’s home in Hanoi, the Vietnamese capital gave up information that his wife was building a luxury holiday home on the coast built with the money he was sending.

And he justifies his actions further by saying he was a ‘good man’ who also allowed the illegal immigrants ‘plenty of air’ in the lorries in which he smuggled them.

He is such a star; the French should have gotten the extra mile and imposed a heavier sentence.

Nguyen continued:

“I never mistreated my compatriots. I was always more humane than the people smugglers from other nationalities.”

French frontier police considered that there could have been many more migrants who were provided with passages to Britain by Nguyen but who were never detected, that is entirely possible.

For sometime I have been saying that the EU has to address the problem of immigration internally within the EU in order to tighten up our borders.

All of Nguyen’s ‘clients’ had followed a well-worn route across Asia to Berlin, and then via lorry to the coast of northern France.

From there they will either claim asylum or disappear into jobs in the black economy in Britain.

It is high time that the European Union started looking at and dealing with illegal immigration seriously.

So far, they are not, the nightly game of cat-and-mouse with police of capturing the same people and letting them go is a short term measure.

But the reality is that these people need to be sent back to their own countries.

And those who smuggle them given harsh sentences, all their assets confiscated and where appropriate permanent deportation from the EU.

Yours sincerely

George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University