The migrant crisis once again hit British shores this week, as a stretch of warmer weather allowed a flurry of boats full of illegal aliens to set sail from France, with over one hundred migrants reaching the UK in the past two days.
On Monday, over 170 boat migrants in attempted to cross the English Channel, 49 of whom were brought ashore by the British Border Force at the Port of Dover.
An additional 77 migrants in four separate boats were taken ashore on Tuesday, with French authorities reporting zero interceptions, according to BBC reporter Simon Jones.
Despite the British taxpayer forking over an additional £28 million to the French to shut down the migrant routes, the latest crossings mean that over 300 illegals have already landed in the UK this year, the Daily Mail reported.
The migrant boats were said to have begun in the early hours of Monday morning, crossing under cover of darkness. However, the paper reported that the migrants were once again transported across the Channel by French authorities who met UK border officials halfway through the Channel.
The Daily Telegraph said that from the beginning of the year attempted crossings had risen by over 50 per cent over the same time period last year, from 630 to 950. The paper did note that border authorities in France and Britain managed to block 70 per cent of the attempts, up from 55 per cent last year.
On Tuesday morning, Brexit leader Nigel Farage reported that there was “madness in the Channel again today,” going on to claim “an illegal vessel landed at Walmer, Kent and 21 people are now on the run being hunted by the police.”
Last week, Mr Farage predicted that migrant crossings of the Channel would pick up again as soon as the temperatures began to rise.
“You can bet your life that the next time we get a spell of calm weather the dinghies will start crossing the Channel again and not a single person will be turned around and sent back,” Farage said last Tuesday.
Following the UK’s official departure from the European Union, Home Secretary Priti Patel promised to “crackdown on illegal immigration and reform the broken asylum system” and in January the government said it would begin refusing asylum claims from migrants caught at sea.
However, the British government has so far failed to secure a deal with the EU or indeed any individual member state on the return of migrants and failed asylum seekers.
The government has also refused to implement a ‘send back the boats’ approach like that taken under the Operation Sovereign Borders policy of former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, which has effectively shut down illegal migration to the country.
In 2020, illegal migration across the English Channel saw a record-breaking year, with over 8,400 illegals recorded to have reached British shores, four times as many recorded in 2019.
At the same time, deportations carried out by Priti Patel’s Home Office fell by 79 per cent, with over 4,000 fewer deportations of foreign criminals.
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