Over 3,000 Illegal Migrants Have Reached the UK in Small Boats This Year

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AFP
Kurt Zindulka

Over 150 more boat migrants were brought ashore at Dover yesterday, bringing the total number of migrants illegally crossing the English channel this year to more than 3,000, a new record.

On Tuesday, 159 illegal migrants, including small children, aboard 13 small vessels were intercepted while they were attempting to cross the English Channel.

The migrants, who claimed to be Kuwaiti, Iranian, Syrian, Palestinian, Yemeni, Egyptian, Ethiopian, Eritrean, Afghan, Libyan, Sudanese, Moroccan, Turkish and Chad nationals, were brought ashore by the British Border Force at the port of Dover in Kent, according to the BBC.

A spokesman for the Home Office said: “Of the 159 people who arrived, 136 were male and 23 female.”

The Home Office did not reveal how many of the illegal migrants were children, as it has stopped publishing the figures of small children arriving by boat over the Channel.

So far this year over 3,000 migrants on an estimated 230 small dinghies have successfully reached British shores — a yearly record despite being the year being only halfway over — compared to 1,890 for the whole of 2019.

In response to the latest crossings, Nigel Farage said on Tuesday that: “the daily invasion increases at pace.”

“Will this government do anything? It’s all talk and no action,” the Brexit Party leader pronounced, calling on Home Secretary Priti Patel to “do something”.

Last week, Ms Patel said: “I have been in France today seeing first-hand the significant work undertaken on that side of the Channel to address the unacceptably high levels of small boats, alongside the efforts of Border Force and the National Crime Agency in the UK.”

“But despite all of the action taken by law enforcement to date – intercepting the boats, making arrests, returning people to France and putting the criminals responsible behind bars – the numbers continue to increase,” she said, adding “This simply cannot be allowed to go on.”

The Home Secretary said her French counterpart has agreed to establish a “joint intelligence cell” to tackle the issue of people smuggling gangs, who facilitate the migrant boat crossings of the Channel.

There has still been no agreement, however, on implementing a system in that would see intercepted migrant boats in the Channel immediately returned to France, which is a safe first world country, where under international law, migrants and asylum seekers must remain.

According to the London-based think tank Migration Watch UK, the drastic increase in illegal boat migration will result in nearly 7,600 illegal migrants by Christmas. This projection is just for those actually recorded by immigration officials, and will likely be far higher, in reality, the migration pressure group warned.

To date, the British government has also failed in deporting illegal boat migrants. A report from the same think tank found that between the start of 2018 and May of this year just 155 migrants were successfully deported, representing just 15 per cent of the 3,200 migrants that reached the United Kingdom during that time period.

Follow Kurt on Twitter at @KurtZindulka

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