It Can Be Done: Cyprus Leads Europe In Deporting 70 Per Cent of Arriving Illegals in 2022

Cyprus
IAKOVOS HATZISTAVROU/AFP via Getty Images
Chris Tomlinson

So far this year, Cyprus has deported around 70 per cent of all arriving illegals — showing countries like Britain that large-scale returns are not impossible after all.

Cyprus’ Interior Minister Nicos Nouris announced the figures this week, noting an increase from last year, in which the country deported just 17 per cent of the illegals who had come to Cyprus.

The nearly 7,000 deportations come as the country has seen a surge of illegal migrant arrivals in recent years, making it the country with the most asylum seekers — and the most deportations — per capita of any country in the European Union, the newspaper Ekathimerini reports.

Interior Minister Nouris stated that between January and October, a total of 18,345 asylum applications were received in Cyprus.

While the numbers may seem small compared to the mass boat crossings to Britain or land crossings over America’s southern border, Cyprus is a relatively small island nation — made smaller by the illegal Turkish occupation of its north — and migrants with asylum status or waiting for a decision represent a remarkable six per cent of its entire population.

According to the European Union-funded website InfoMigrants, the large increase in deportations from Cyprus is linked to agreements signed between the island’s government and various third countries including India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Vietnam — although the Cypriot government has not actually released a breakdown of the nationalities of those deported this year.

The figures are a stark contrast with the meagre number of deportations elsewhere in Europe, such as the United Kingdom.

There, the Home Office reported last week that in the year to June of 2022 they managed to remove not just a much, much lower proportion of illegal aliens and foreign criminals, but a much lower total number of migrants — just 3,250; a 55 per cent decline from on the already woeful figure for 2019, prior to the Chinese coronavirus pandemic.

Indeed, the United Kingdom continues to see record numbers of boat migrants crossing the English Channel, with an estimated 44,000 arrivals so far in 2022, far above last year’s prior record of 28,526 illegals.

Notably, this figure does not take into account thousands more migrants breaking into Britain by stowing away in heavy goods vehicles, for example, or by simply overstaying visas, the small boats crisis having absorbed most of the political and media classes’ attention.

Britain is not alone in Western Europe in failing to tackle illegal immigration, however, with France’s deportation figures being similarly dismal in recent years.

French media reports that in the first half of 2021, just six per cent of deportation orders were actually followed, and even prior to coronavirus the figure was still just 12 per cent.

This has often had dire consequences for French residents, with a migrant already subject to three unenforced deportation orders under multiple identities being accused of raping a woman in hospital last month, for example.

Follow Chris Tomlinson on Twitter at @TomlinsonCJ or email at ctomlinson(at)breitbart.com.

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