Since officially leaving the European Union at the beginning of the year, the number of illegal boat migrants arriving from the continent via the English Channel has continued its record-setting pace, with over 500 illegals being brought ashore in Britain this year.
In February, 308 illegal aliens were recorded to have landed on British shores in 18 separate instances, adding to the 223 who were taken ashore in January.
As the rough and wintery conditions subsided in recent days, the illegal crossings of the Channel have started to spike, with 87 migrants brought ashore on Saturday, alone.
The latest landings mean that there have been 531 migrants officially recorded to have arrived this year, nearly double the number during the same time period last year (279), according to the Daily Mail.
Last year, a record 8,410 illegal boat migrants were officially found to have entered the country, up from 1,850 the year before.
The true number, however, is likely to have been higher, as the Home Office figures did not tally those believed to be under the age of eighteen in the count. The figures also, of course, do not account for those who arrived clandestinely.
On Sunday, BBC reporter Simon Jones disclosed that “the Home Office has tonight refused to say how many migrants – if any – have been returned to EU countries since the start of the year. It says it will write to the Home Affairs Committee with that information.”
In 2020, the number of foreign criminals deported by the Home Office fell by 79 per cent, with only 1,128 criminals successfully deported, down from 5,322 the year before.
Aside from the failure to deport foreign criminals, the Home Office was revealed in December to have lost track of over 37,000 migrants, who either fled from detention centres of skipped bail over the past three decades.
To date, the UK has also failed to secure an agreement with the EU, or indeed any individual member state, on the issue of returning failed asylum seekers.
The UK paid out an additional £28 million to France in November to fund extra security patrols along the coast, on top of the tens of millions already sent to the wealthy European Union nation since 2014.
However, this has failed to meaningfully stop illegal immigration from pouring across the Channel from France.
Despite promises to take back control of the country’s borders following Brexit, the nominally Conservative government has failed to do so and has so far refused to adopt a simple send back the boats approach — as seen to be effective in Australian in the past — rather than taking migrants ashore in the hopes that they will later be deported.
The Home Office trotted out its standard refrain in regards to the latest migrant crossings, saying: “People should claim asylum in the first safe country they reach and not risk their lives making these dangerous crossings. We are continuing to pursue the criminals behind these illegal crossings.”
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