Illegal immigrant jailed for fake passport

43-year-old man living illegally in Watford for more than a decade has been jailed for using a false Pakistan passport in an attempt to get a national insurance number.
Sabteen Bukhari claims to have arrived in England in the 90s on a six-month work permit and has remained illegally doing low paid jobs ever since.
However, the UK Border Agency and the Home Office have no record of his entry into the country or of issuing a visa.
Bukhari, of Middle Way, Watford, admitted buying a fake Pakistan passport for £300 after losing his in 1992. It was after he produced the false documentation at a job centre in Slough, while trying to get a national insurance number, that he was arrested in December.
St Albans Crown Court heard in mitigation on Monday that Bukhari, who is from a small village in rural Kashmir, had the support of a councillor in the public gallery and numerous other friends and family.
He had never been in trouble and spent his time in Watford working in menial jobs for between £3 and £3.50 an hour.
He tried to get a national insurance number so that he could pay taxes and work legally.
He pleaded guilty to possessing false identification with intent at a previous hearing and had spent 96 days remanded in custody.
Jailing Bukhari for the recommended six months, Judge Martin Griffith said: "The courts take a dim view of people in possession of a false passport. You must have known it was a false passport because of the circumstances in which it was purchased.
"In the past this offence has attracted a sentence as high as 18 months."
He added: "Recently a distinction has arisen that those that seek to obtain or use false documents to obtain employment should be dealt with by a lesser sentence than those attempting to enter or leave the country."
Because time on remand was ordered to count towards the sentence Bukhari may be released immediately said Judge Griffith.