For its raid on the Palace Pier, the UK Immigration Service assembled more than 100 police officers, including specialist staff from Kent and Leicester, ten immigration officers, two press officers and one inflatable boat.
Their trip to the seaside cannot have cost less than £100,000 and probably more than double that when you cost in the preparatory "intelligence-led" work and follow-up paperwork.
So at least £20,000 and more likely nearer £50,000 a head was spent to arrest half a dozen young Brazilians and Colombians, who may have been working illegally on the pier.
John Gammon thinks (Letters, August 30) you would have to be slipped a fiver by the Noble Organisation to say the raid was a waste of public money.
Sorry, Mr Gammon, they didn't slip me a fiver and I'm not otherwise connected as you insinuate.
I leave it to you to work out how much the UK Immigration Service, with its current productivity rate, would need to round up everyone in the UK who shouldn't be here or shouldn't be working here. Want to foot the bill?
-Trevor Pateman, Brighton
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