Originally Posted by RichardCoulter

There was a programme on BBC1 around the same time. It showed the police moving them on from the area because they were making a nuisance of themselves by living in bushes in parks etc. Everytime they moved them on, they made a nuisance of themselves elsewhere. When moved from there, they'd move back to the original place, so it was a thankless task. These people tended to come from poorer countries & used everything they had to get a flight here to 'make their fortune'. This tended to be crime, benefit fraud, prostitution, shoplifting etc.

There were calls to make it a condition of EU migration that one had to have a job & accomodation in place before coming, i'm not sure how far Cameron got with this. I'm guessing the EU blocked it like they did his efforts to curtail their rights to claim benefits.

They were from Romania, so were legal and able to get a NI number. However, it's not difficult to obtain a NI No if you're not entitled to one. Thousands of illegal immigrants have been issued with one when they shouldn't have been and they are available to buy on the black market. These are usually obtained by people pretending to be a deceased child that has come of age or by stealing someones identity who has emigrated abroad.

Sometimes the DWP will issue temporary NINO's (you can tell these because they always start with TN followed by six digits that represent the date of birth that the person is or is claiming to be). These don't show up on the computer system, so can be abused.