It emerged this week that the UK Border Agency has lost track of 60,000 asylum seekers. On past form, rather than address failings at UKBA directly, the Home Office will carry on trying to look tough on asylum seekers and illegal immigration by announcing stricter rules for immigrants who require work permits.

It is not politically popular to draw attention to the incongruity of justifying changes to these rules with reference to asylum figures. So it has taken the tenacity of the legal profession to check the excesses of a wrong-headed immigration policy.

In three cases last year the home secretary was found to have acted illegally in effecting changes to the immigration rules without the chance for parliamentary scrutiny. As the Gazette discovered while researching next week’s feature on immigration law, the illegality of the mechanisms used to change the rules, and introduce temporary immigration ‘caps’, was pointed out to Home Office officials by immigration lawyers before these changes were actually made.

Permanent monthly caps on workers from outside the EU are due to be introduced in April. This time the government is likely to do it by the book. Yet there remain huge problems with what is proposed. In making the case for a reversal of this policy, lawyers have sought to show how clients will be adversely affected by new caps, limits and requirements.