Censor the Migrants Away: Priti Patel Demands Social Media Remove Videos of Channel Crossings

LONDON, ENGLAND - JANUARY 12: United Kingdom Home Secretary Priti Patel talks at a coronav
Leon Neal/Getty Images
Kurt Zindulka

Home Secretary Priti Patel has reportedly demanded that social media companies censor videos of illegal migrants crossing the English Channel as they “glamourise” the perilous journey.

The Home Secretary has increasingly come under fire for her failures to stop illegal migration and “take back control” of Britain’s borders following its official departure from the European Union at the beginning of the year.

Patel’s latest scheme to drive down numbers of migrants crossing the Channel is to call on social media companies to take down videos, arguing that footage promoting the “lethal crossings” is “unacceptable”, according to the BBC.

The letter from the Home Secretary was sent on Saturday, after a video showing a group of migrant men crossing from France in a rubber dinghy went viral on TikTok.

“Posts which promote and even glamorise these lethal crossings are totally unacceptable. They encourage others to leave a safe European country and put theirs and their family’s life at risk and are even used by people smugglers to promote their deadly business,” Patel said.

“What these posts don’t mention are the people who have died trying to make this crossing, or those forced to spend 13 hours in unseaworthy boats in freezing waters.”

She said that social media companies “must quickly and proactively… before more men, women and children die in the Channel.”

Commenting on Patel’s call for censorship, Bow Group chairman Ben Harris-Quinney told Breitbart London: “The Government absolutely should be pursuing their reported aim to target people smugglers, to expose their practices, to shut their operations down, and to secure the UK border.”

The Bow Group chairman also noted the existence of the videos also shamed the government for their failings, allowing the public to hold the Conservatives to account. He said that had it not been for Brexit leader Nigel Farage posting images and videos of the migration crisis in the English Channel, then the government would not “even be talking about this issue.”

“What we don’t want to see is a situation where a proposal to censor people smugglers on social media is used to block activist’s and journalist’s ability to draw attention to the issue with footage of people smugglers and illegal immigration,” Mr Harris-Quinney said.

“Saying one thing and doing the opposite has been the hallmark of the Conservative Party’s approach to immigration since 2010,” he added.

Patel’s demands come at the end of a week of failures, with hundreds of migrants landing on British soil throughout the week, bringing the total to over 4,300 since the start of the year.

Speaking on Friday, Nigel Farage said that Patel makes an “endless series of statements” on fixing the immigration system, and “gets up at the tory party conference and talks tough everybody claps and says isn’t she marvellous.”

On the contrary, Mr Farage said that “at the moment she’s proving to be one of the worst home secretaries ever.”

On Saturday, the Home Office announced that it would be launching an investigation after a damning report claimed to show that the British Border Force traveled into French territorial waters to pick up and ferry migrants to the Port of Dover.

The Bow Group chairman told Breitbart London that the Conservative government needs to meaningfully reduce not only illegal immigration but legal immigration as well.

“Whilst illegal immigration is a major problem, the main problem is that over 700,000 immigrants enter our nation each year legally, and settle here legally, illegal immigration comes on top of that,” he said.

Harris-Quinney noted that 82 per cent of new British citizens were either foreign-born or born to a foreign parent.

“The demographic changes that will cause, even if immigration is now reduced to zero, will likely alter this country and our communities more than any other event in our history,” he said.

“We call on the Government to stop playing the public for fools and address the failures of more than 20 years of mass immigration, to secure our border and to develop a strategy to dramatically cut all forms of immigration back to the far lower levels seen for the vast majority of British history.”

Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka

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