Whatever your view on immigration – and it is a subject which can stir up strong emotions – you will almost certainly accept that some form of controls need to be in place.

And that being the case, they need to be enforced – to do anything less would make a mockery out of the system and destroy public faith in it.

Failing to tackle illegal immigration can also be divisive at a community level.

For example, if people are able to live and work here without permission, while presumably making no contribution through taxes, then that will cause understandable resentment.

And that, in turn, can give rise to widespread tensions if people then assume, wrongly, that such behaviour is representative of particular minority ethnic communities as a whole.

So the rules need to be enforced and, ideally, the public at large need to be able to see that is happening.

Operations such as the recent crackdown on bogus marriages which led to a number of people being sentenced yesterday succeeded on both counts.

And provided such initiatives are based on firm intelligence, as seems to be the case here, there can be no complaints.

Hopefully there will be more of the same. Especially when, as in this particular instance, the ringleader who organised the scam, and not just those who hoped to find a way of staying in the country, was brought to justice.