Migrant Crisis: Nearly 9 in 10 Britons Believe Govt is ’Performing Badly’

CALAIS, FRANCE - NOVEMBER 04: A teenage migrant uses a blanket to try and keep warm at a c
Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
Kurt Zindulka

The British public overwhelmingly believe that the government is performing badly in handling immigration and asylum, with nearly nine in ten expressing their disdain for the Conservative party response to the growing crisis.

As nearly 40,000 illegals aliens have crossed the English Channel in small people-smuggler operated boats from the beaches of France since the start of the year, a poll from YouGov has found that 87 per cent of the public believe the government’s handling of immigration has been ‘bad’. Nearly two-thirds (62 per cent) also believe that the government is doing “very badly” on that front.

For those who believe the that the government is doing poorly, the chief issue raised was the failure to stop the boats full of mostly young men from landing in Britain at 52 per cent, with 46 per cent also expressing the belief that the government doesn’t take a had enough line on illegal immigration.

The recent spate of scandals surrounding overflowing migrant holding centres over recent weeks has seen the issue come to front of mind for many more Britons, with the polling agency finding that immigration and asylum is now one of the most important issues for 37 per cent of the public, up from 24 per cent from just last week.

Over four in ten also said that they felt the Conservative government has been allowing too much immigration overall. While the number of people who believed the overall level of immigration has been either good or bad for the country was evenly split in August at 29 per cent on both sides, the sentiment that it has been bad has increased to 33 per cent while positive fell to 23 per cent.

Though opponents of mass migration are often castigated as racists or xenophobes, the polling found that the British public holds dramatically different views on the different types of migration. The poll found that 39 per cent of respondents held a positive view of people coming to the UK for work, while 55 per cent held a negative opinion on those who illegally cross the Channel. Unsurprisingly, negative opinions on illegal migration differed by political orientation, with 85 per cent of Conservatives disapproving of illegal migrants, compared to just 33 per cent of Labour Party voters.

While Prime Minister Sunak had vowed during the summer leadership campaign to replace Boris Johnson that he would put an end to the Channel migrant crisis within 100 days of taking office, it appears that this will likely meet the same fate as many of Sunak’s other pledges to the public, abandoned and unfulfilled.

So far this year, nearly 40,000 illegals have been recorded as landing in Britain, compared to compared to 28,526 in 2021, 8,466 in 2020, 1,843 in 2019 and 299 in 2018.

This, however, only accounts for those migrants who were intercepted in the English Channel by the Border Force or the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) and therefore logged in the system. While the majority are brought ashore in this method, there are still instances in which the boats reach British beaches undetected, meaning the true figure of illegal crossings is likely higher than the official government numbers.

This week, for instance, migrants landing in Kent have been reportedly witnessed by local residents landing and being picked up in vans and cars waiting and ready to complete the people-smuggling operation. According to a report from The Times of London, migrants have been signalling their location to the people smugglers in Britain by dropping digital pins on their phones.

Charity groups claimed that the incidents demonstrate that the illegal migrants are being trafficked, with the Refugee Council saying: “We know from our work that trafficking and exploitation are serious problems and these reports are very worrying.”

Last week the BBC reported that Albanian criminal gangs operating on both sides of the Channel are using the migrant camps in France to recruit members for their drug-selling operations in the UK, offering free passage in a boat in return for joining the crime networks.

Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka

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