Warning: UK Govt Plan to Cover Up Illegal Migrant Numbers in 2022 Will Allow Arrivals to Soar Unchecked

UK Border Force officials travel in a RIB with migrants picked up at sea whilst Crossing t
BEN STANSALL/AFP via Getty Images
Nathaniel Charles

A British migration think tank has warned that if the government is able to stop releasing illegal migrant data, numbers will continue to increase without the public’s knowledge “for months”.

Migration Watch UK warned that the British Home Office “plans to stop issuing daily arrival figures”, opting instead to release “totals on a much less frequent basis”.

The think tank highlighted the government is planning to do this despite — or perhaps because of — the Home Office forecasting that 2022 will be the worst year for mass-illegal migrant English Channel crossings since the ‘major incident’ was declared in 2018, and have labelled the Home Office’s censorious plans as “a huge affront to transparency, accountability and democracy”.

Migration Watch claims Home Office sources have told them that “the government is allegedly expecting” illegal migrant arrivals of “between 65,000 and 90,000” in 2022, with arrivals in 2022 so far amounting to “six times the total arriving in the first month of 2021”, itself already a record year.

Currently, the government releases daily crossing figures, which includes those picked up by charities as well as UK authorities.

The migration watchdog also emphasised how illegal migration numbers can quickly spiral out of control if there is not strict government action pointing out that illegal arrivals into Britain “rose from just under 300 in 2018”, when the migrant crisis began “to over 28,400 in 2021”, what they described as “an astonishing 95-fold increase”.

The British public has become increasingly interested in, and sensitive to the government’s response to immigration, with 82% of Britons saying that they disapproved of the government’s response to illegal channel crossers, in a YouGov poll conducted in November 2021. The fact remains that promising to get illegal migration under control was a key Conservative election promise for many years, including in elections they won, but the pledge was later dropped, with top Tory figures admitting they never intended to honour the pledge in the first place.

Taxpayers in the UK have been forced to stump up an approximate £430 million annually to pay for the support of migrants while their asylum claims are processed, and this is expected to rise by over £100 million by the end of 2022.

The British government has verbally acknowledged this cost is a significant problem, especially as 3 and 4-star hotels are often used by local councils to house illegals, but rather than speed up the deportation process or turn back migrant boats, the Home Office has drafted in the British Army to build more accommodation for migrants.  It has been revealed this week that the cost to house migrants is now even higher than previously thought, costing nearly £5 million a day.

Despite Britain’s soft migration policy and tens of thousands of new illegals expected to be arriving in 2022, French President Emmanuel Macron has vowed to “step up” pressure on British Prime Minister Boris Johnson over creating a legal passage between France and UK for illegal migrants, claiming the British system is stuck in the “1980s”.

Macron’s new migration plan would only allow Britain to send illegal migrants back to France if they granted asylum to an equal number of illegals from France.

The French President also blamed the UK government for the migrant deaths in the Channel, which has become an increasing concern for politicians following the death of 27 migrants who attempted to make the illegal journey across the English Channel.

“The responsibility for those who die at sea does not fall upon France but upon this British refusal”, Macron said.

The British Home Secretary Priti Patel called out Macron saying his “comments are wrong. They’re absolutely wrong. So, let me be very, very clear about that”.

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