Chinese immigrants jailed

Dec 11 2009 Ayrshire Post (main ed)

FOUR Chinese immigrants who tried to enter the country illegally at Prestwick Airport are to be deported.

But Wu Yen Lee, 51, Tung Ping Ling, 23, Shi Xiao Di, 19, and Jiang Xing, 16, will each serve two months behind bars before they are sent away.

The foursome all appeared at Ayr Sheriff Court this week and pleaded guilty to trying to gain entry to the UK with improperly obtained passports.

With the aid of a translator, Sheriff Carole Cunningham was told that on November 11, the accused came off the morning Alicante flight at Prestwick International Airport and approached passport control.

While handing over travel documents, Lee announced that the four of them were a travelling family here for one week to look for schools for their younger son (Xing).

Savvy immigration officers were quick to spot irregular creasing and glue tampering on their passports and asked if Lee had other forms of identification.

She replied: “No”.

The four were then separately interviewed and admitted they were not a family and had in fact bought their passports for $2,000 each from a man in Spain so they could come to the UK to better themselves.

Xing also said he wanted to flee to the UK to escape the enemies he made throughout his life of crime and gang violence.

Sheriff Cunningham said their attempt was “part of a reasonably sophisticated scam in an attempt to the enter the country illegally.”

She added that the four had “no legal entitlement to be in the UK.”

Lee, Ling and Di will carry out their sentence in prison

Xing is awaiting his deportation in Polmont Young Offenders Institute.