You paint a very bleak picture but in these days when everyone has a mobile, why cannot everyone who wants to go abroad, just register their finger print and when at the port, after making a booking using these finger print scans at home, just walk through or even better, someone with a scanning device, just visits the coach or car and checks that the finger prints registered are in that vehicle on that ticket.It's not just the number of staff.
It's that issue that this type of border control, where each person is checked individually was designed to work for airports.
Where people are on foot.
It means, if space can be made available, then this could be rolled out to train stations as well.
(Although there will need to be some serious demolition in the middle of London and Paris to make the new terminals)
However the big problem is vehicles.
Take our Motorhomes as examples.
(And lets call it a tag axle 9m, with a car on a trailer at the back and 2 adults and two younger children inc a toddler on board)
They have to drive into a car park
Possibly a 'lane' type of parking to allow for different vehicle lengths
Behind the two minibuses each full of 17 teenagers and in front of the coach with 60 OAP's
Everyone gets out, the push chair is assembled for the toddler.
The teenagers are now spread across the car park as the Adult drivers attempts to herd cats
The OAP's are struggling all to get off and looking for the loo's as the Driver opens the luggage area for the three wheelchairs.
Within 5 minutes all 100 people have made it to the building where passports and biometrics are checked.
(Remember even Immigration has quoted 85% fail rate initially, falling to 20% fail rate after three years)
If there was no queue when they arrived
If there were 20 booths
If only a 20% fail rate
If the Teenagers can each be persuaded to remove hats and hair from their faces.
If the OAP's can be directed to put their passports into the feeder, the right way up
If the wheeled passengers (old and young) can be directed to the correct booth
In theory it should 'only' take five minutes to process 100 people with 20 booths and a100% success rate.
Practice is obviously vastly different.
100 people exit the building, half via the loos.
People drift onto the vehicles
Mixing with the new arrivals of course, so people that have been checked mixing with those that have not ?
Or perhaps the drivers go through on their own ? and pick up on the other side?
In which case who is dealing with the loose teenagers and the small children ?
Loads of people wandering around a large car park looking for a vehicle they may not be familiar with and they have no idea where it is ?
What could possibly go wrong?
With the best will in the world you are looking at 20 mins per vehicle
(Think about how long it takes to do a motorway loo stop, even if you are not getting fuel or anything it at least 20 mins from exit to entry of the motorway)
Now extrapolate that figure to the 11m people in 5m vehicles that pass through Dover each year.
(Answer: 16m hours, or 190 years of wasted time per year, just at Dover, and working on the assumption is 'only' 20 mins of wasted time per vehicle. Even using the previous Governments own figures of 16 hour tailbacks, the real figure could be many many time higher)
There would have to be other random checks of course!
If one can open one's mobile or open a door in this way, why not exit or entry?
It would also filter out criminals!