20,000 Illegal Boat Migrants Projected to Land in the UK This Year: Report

Waleed (C), 29, a Kuwaiti migrant, sits in a dinghy with his brother's family and other mi
SAMEER AL-DOUMY/AFP via Getty Images
Kurt Zindulka

Britain is on pace for 20,000 illegal boat migrants to land in 2021, more than doubling last year’s already record-setting numbers, as another 140 illegal aliens were brought ashore on Tuesday.

According to the Daily Telegraph, some 1,400 illegal migrants have landed on British shores this year. The numbers are nearly three times as many as reached the United Kingdom during the same time period last year, which stood at 514.

Analysis conducted by the paper projected that if current trends continue, then 20,000 boat migrants could land in the first year of Britain’s independence from the European Union, despite pledges from the government that the issue would be solved following Brexit.

Approximately 140 boat migrants successfully crossed the English Channel from France on Tuesday, and a further 50 are believed to have made it to the country on small rubber boats Wednesday morning, the Daily Mail reported. The numbers on Tuesday were the second-highest of the year after 183 landed in a single day earlier this month.

Commenting on the growing migrant crisis in the Enlgish Channel, Migration Watch UK chairman Alp Mehmet said: “More than double the number have crossed this year as came during January to March 2020. These dangerous crossings will continue and go on increasing until it is made abundantly clear that the pathway to entering the UK illegally in order to claim asylum is closed.”

The former director-general of the Border Force, Tony Smith, said that people-smugglers have used the news of Home Secretary Priti Patel’s proposed immigration reforms to encourage prospective illegal migrants to set sail before any changes are enacted.

“There will be an acceleration in the activity to get in under the wire before the Government does whatever it is going to do,” Mr Smith said.

Last Wednesday, the Home Secretary announced a series of proposed reforms to Britain’s “broken” asylum system.

The reforms, which are to be a part of the government’s upcoming Sovereign Borders Bill later this year, will see asylum seekers who arrive through unofficial means, such as illegal boat migrants, prevented from applying for leave to remain, as well as from attaining British citizenship.

The proposals would also see migrants who travelled through safe countries, such as those in the European Union — and principally France — be subject to “boomerang” deportation in as little as 24 hours, at least in theory.

How exactly the government would accomplish such a feat remains unknown as so far there has been no agreement reached between the UK and the EU on the return of failed asylum seekers, and the British government has remained consistently unwilling to simply turn back the boats on its own initiative.

As opposed to the wildly successful Operation Sovereign Borders policy adopted under the government of former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott, which did opt for a “turn back the boats” approach, the British authorities have taken boat migrants ashore in the hopes of deporting them at a later date.

In a letter to the Home Affairs Committee, Patel revealed that there are currently 8,700 migrants, most of whom are boat migrants, in nearly 90 hotels throughout the country. She admitted that the migrant hotel programme — a phenomenon exposed by Brexit leader Nigel Farage — has already cost the Home Office some £258 million.

Patel also said that the controversial military barracks turned migrant camp in Folkestone, Kent, will continue to house migrants and confirmed that the government is looking to add another migrant camp on a Ministry of Defence property in Barton Stacey.

Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka

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