The Sunday People reported that it had exposed a major ‘security scandal’ when a journalist allegedly boarded a private yacht in France and sailed to Guernsey before entering the UK unchecked.The report suggested that the journey from France to the UK could be completed in around 12 hours if the illegal entrant took a ferry from Guernsey to Southampton – even though no such ferry exists.The People, which sells 2,100 copies each week in the Island, claimed that asylum seekers were exploiting a ‘gaping loophole’ in Britain’s immigration defences by bribing yacht owners to take them to Jersey and Guernsey.A leader published along with the article called for the islands to ‘get their houses in order’.
‘Jersey, Guernsey and Alderney are as much gateways to the United Kingdom as Dover or Heathrow.
And they must be policed just as stringently,’ the paper said.
