Just One in 40 Illegal Channel Migrants Returned to EU: Report

GLASGOW, SCOTLAND - AUGUST 01: Afghan refugee Rahman Sahah (R) aged 32 and Mirwais Ahmadza
Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
Kurt Zindulka

The British government has only successfully deported one in 40 illegal boat migrants back to the European Union since the start of last year, an analysis from a British newspaper has revealed.

Just 2.6 per cent of the 5,795 boat migrants have been deported since January of 2019. Zero of the 2,860 migrants who have reached Britain since May have been sent back so far.

“We’ve had repeated promises that this situation is being tackled,” a local source in Dover told The Sun.

“They’re being taken to hotels and are being housed here,” the source said, adding: “Those stats fly in the face of what the Government has said it will do.”

“We’ve got plenty of warm weather so the crossings will rise. It’s a key time for the traffickers,” the local explained.

There are an estimated 48,000 asylum seekers in the UK as of March of this year, according to a report from the National Audit Office (NAO) — more than double the number recorded in 2012. The report projected that the cost of housing the migrants will reach some £4 billion between 2019 and 2029.

In July, Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage released a video which showed a hotel in the West Midlands refusing to take bookings from British people, because it was fully booked with 147 asylum seekers, presumably at the expense of the British taxpayer.

Mr Farage warned that if the asylum claims of the migrants in the hotel are rejected, they will not be deported, but rather “they will still stay in the country… picking fruit, working in the rag trade in Leicester or whatever it is. They will move into the illegal slave economy in this country.”

In order to simplify the return of failed asylum seekers and illegal migrants, the British government will demand that France begin fingerprinting migrants, which will also serve to prevent them from attempting to cross the English Channel multiple times.

“The French must ensure that migrants who are caught attempting to reach the UK by boat cannot do so again,” said immigration minister Chris Philp.

Philp, who is set to meet with his French counterparts next week, will tell French immigration authorities that migrants caught attempting to illegally cross the Channel should be fingerprinted.

“They must be removed from Calais and given options to either seek protection in France or return to their home country,” he wrote in The Telegraph.

“We need to intercept those who manage to leave France and return those who make it to our shores. That’s why I will continue to push my French counterparts to look hard at interceptions at sea,” Philp added.

One of the main issues preventing the return of migrants to the European Union is that many migrants destroy their identification documents, in order to stymie the deportation process, as countries are less willing to take migrants back without proof of origin.

Commenting on the issue, Nigel Farage wrote that: “A particularly troubling aspect of this state of affairs is that the overwhelming number of people who arrive in Dover do not produce any identification documents. This not only makes it impossible to send them back to their home country, it also raises huge security concerns.”

“In the last few weeks, fatal attacks have been carried out by asylum seekers in Glasgow and Reading. Many people told me they have never seen such active policing in the area,” Mr Farage lamented.

Follow Kurt on Twitter at @KurtZindulka

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