The village of Harold is to have all its residents trained to spot illegal immigrants in a trial to work alongside government plans to get banks, landlords and milkmen to check the status of all their customers.
Minister of State for Immigration, Mark Harper MP said: “It is good to see people taking the initiative and fighting the problem of foreigners without relying on proper border controls.
“We have decided to provide some of the training to the village including passport checks, visa document checks and stop and search techniques for those that look a bit foreign.
“Obviously they’ll have no powers of arrest, but if they think they have found an ‘illegal’, they can call the number on the van we place on the village green.”
Operation ‘you talk funny’ is not expected to produce big results, but may if the figures can be manipulated enough, it may see the scheme rolled out across the country and the abolition of border controls completely.
“Having the whole village trained in ‘illegal spotting’ and making it a legal requirement to start every conversation with ‘are you legit’ should help reduce the number of illegal aliens in the village” village police officer, PC Flegg, told us.
“So far operation ‘you talk funny’ has not caught any illegal immigrants, but after a brief struggle, we did manage to deport someone back to Wales.”
