Taxi Driver Online

This case raises several points not least the point that brings into question the ability of the present licensing system to detect and prevent illegal immigrants obtaining a license? If indeed the person in question was licensed? Perhaps it's a case that the person was operating unlicensed?

The article doesn't provide any evidence that he was licensed so perhaps we should assume that he wasn't?

If he was licensed then I'm sure TDO subscribers would be most interested to know which authority sanctioned his license?
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The Guardian

September 18, 2007 Tuesday

Iraqi vows to defy double deportation

An Iraqi Kurd asylum seeker is facing forcible removal from Britain for the second time this year.

Mohammed Abdul Rahman, a 31-year-old taxi driver who is being held at Campsfield House detention centre, has pledged to return to the UK.

His determination to re-enter Britain by any means illustrates the extreme desperation of Kurdish asylum seekers fearful of returning to northern Iraq - a region increasingly scarred by car bombs, threatened by civil war and now in the grip of a cholera outbreak.

His case also highlights the pressure on immigration controls in Europe. The Home Office does not keep records of what it terms "re-removals".

Mr Rahman first came to Britain in December 2000 and lived for six years in Liverpool, working in factories. A failed asylum seeker, he was detained earlier this year and held for 25 days in Doncaster. He was then put on a charter flight from RAF Brize Norton and sent back to Irbil, the regional capital of northern Iraq.

The Kurdish region, relatively calm since the US-led invasion in 2003, is the only part of Iraq to which the government is deporting failed asylum seekers.

Mr Rahman told the Guardian: "I came back to Britain on August 6. I was arrested in a hotel in Dover. The judge has said I will have to go back again because of the immigration laws.

"My family is in Kirkuk but the city is not safe. There are car bombs there and people who will kill me." He says he has been targeted in a tribal feud. "I don't want to go back to my country. (If I am sent away again) I will come back to this country."

As you say , this raises the whole question of immigrants driving cabs.

There are two aspects.

1. An enhanced CRB check is required of a UK national, how can an Asylum seeker provide any sort of police record (from the country he is fleeing due to fear of persecution). Also if foreign students apply for a badge then how can they provide a police check that is at least equivalent to an enhanced CRB?

2. Both Asylum Seekers and Foreign Students are not allowed to work on a self-employed basis. They may work on a PAYE basis though. As the vast majority of cab jobs are self-employed then how can local authority licensing officers give them badges when they are breaking the terms of their stay in the UK?

ps check out the DfT Best Practice Guidlines

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Our safety is Paramount

this one would make a good cabbie,looking into his eyes you know you can trust him

http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/news/ ... _page.html

You couldn't make this up could you? The whole world must be laughing their t*ts off at us.

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http://wingsoverscotland.com/ http://www.newsnetscotland.com/

They should tell him that if he re-enters the UK again he will be jailed for 25 years.

Someone should tell him that there are plenty of other safe countries closer to Iraq to live than travelling all the way to the UK.