Over 2,000 Illegal Migrants Land In Britain in First Half of August

DUNGENESS, ENGLAND - AUGUST 04: A group of around 40 migrants arrive via the RNLI (Royal N
Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
Kurt Zindulka

Over 2,000 illegal boat migrants have successfully crossed the English Channel from France since the start of the month, putting August on pace for a record number of alien arrivals.

Last Thursday, a record 592 illegal migrants arrived at the Port of Dover, eclipsing the previous daily record of 482, which was set just over a week prior. The migrant boats continued over the weekend, with another 150 landings on Sunday.

The latest crossings take the total for the month to approximately 2,049 according to calculations made by the Daily Mail. This puts August on pace to break the previous monthly record of 3,509, which was set last month.

To date, approximately 11,464 boat migrants have reached British soil since the start of the year, compared to 8,410 for the entirety of 2020.

Despite constant promises and pledges from Home Secretary Priti Patel to crack down on the migrant routes, the boats have only increased in number and in size, with people smuggler gangs using larger and often unseaworthy vessels to ferry migrants from the beaches of France.

Appearing on GB News on Monday morning, Brexit leader Nigel Farage predicted that the failures in Afghanistan will lead to another wave of illegal migration into Europe and ultimately the UK.

Mr Farge also predicted that the young men who comprise the overwhelming majority of illegal migrants will claim to be from Afghanistan, as many already destroy their travel and identity documents prior to reaching British shores in order to make deportations more difficult.

The issue may be compounded by the fact that Defence Secretary Ben Wallace pronounced on Monday that the British government would be dropping passport requirements for asylum seekers from Afghanistan.

“If some of them are genuinely from Afghanistan, how do we know that the Taliban or other extremist groups aren’t using this route to get their operatives into our country,” Farage questioned.

Mr Farge went on to criticise Home Secretary Priti Patel for her failures to enact meaningful change amid the growing migrant crisis.

“There is no deterrent whatsoever, the only concern anyone would have crossing the Channel would be the sea conditions,” he said.

“We already have numbers that we simply can’t cope with, the four-star hotels are booked, they are running out of accommodation,” the Brexiteer added.

Mr Farage has long been a proponent of adopting a similar strategy to that taken by former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott, who unilaterally sent back illegal boats to Indonesia under his Operation Sovereign Borders policy, which resulted in 900 straight days of zero illegal boat migrants reaching Australia by 2017.

“There is only one way to stop this and that is to tow the boats back into Calais harbour and by doing that the French government will come to the negotiating table,” Farage said.

“At the moment, we have a situation in which Macron refuses to have a summit with the British even though it is long overdue… and until the French understand that we are simply not going to put up with this any longer, it will continue,” he warned.

Mr Farage has predicted that by the end of the year, some 30,000 illegal migrants will have crossed the English Channel from France.

Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka

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