Tony Smith’s story is a remarkable one. Starting work for the Home Office straight after leaving school, he would remain there for 40+ years. In that time, he worked his way up from being a junior civil servant to one of the most senior officials responsible for Britain’s borders.
After retiring in 2013, Tony worked as an international border management consultant and gave evidence to parliamentary committees on immigration, asylum and border security.
Why did we invite him on?
The UK’s border crisis is the defining story of our time. Elections are won and lost, protests fill our streets every summer, and a life-changing referendum was debated off the back of it.
There are likely few people on Earth more qualified to discuss it than Tony. Boasting a near half-century experience of protecting and policing the border, he has as peripheral a view as one can have: how different governments have tackled the problem (or failed to), which policies worked and didn’t, and who, if anyone, is ultimately to blame.
These are answers we’ve been seeking since Brexit, and we were thrilled when Tony agreed to share his view on our show.
What did we learn?
Tony started working in immigration enforcement in 1972. As he regales us with stories of that time, it’s hard to express what a different environment it once was and how much has changed in his lifetime. When Tony first started, immigration policy was essentially enforced by the whim of the enforcer. If he decided someone was dodgy, he could turn them away without recourse. To modern sensibilities, it’s totally unthinkable, but the circumstances were such that this kind of practice was possible.
”Nobody claimed asylum back then. If you caught them trying to sneak in, they’d say “Fair play” and ask to get some money out of the ATM so they could be on their way, which we would usually accommodate … It was only in the late ‘80s that we started to see a lot of asylum applications.”
And once it started, the wave was exponential. Year on year, more and more refugees were claiming asylum; it quickly went from a rare quirk to the norm. Initially, it didn’t look like it was going to be a problem. It soon became the problem.
”I thought we’d just send them back to France. But then the lawyers and the advisors came in, and they said that if they’re claiming persecution, they have a legitimate reason to be here … It’s become the magic word - if you claim asylum, it trumps the immigration policy.”
Once that trick was discovered, the immigration system was never the same. Subverted by the corruption of an ostensibly good-faith and high-trust process, it became a cruel game. The enforcers naturally became more suspicious. Meanwhile, claimants flout the system more and more brazenly.
