The number of crossings by boat across the English Channel has risen sharply despite the pandemic and pledges from the government to stop illegal aliens from making it to Britain’s shores.
An investigation by the i newspaper published on Thursday found that illegal crossings by small boat rose “exponentially”, which it based on the seizures of the vessels increasing from 154 in 2019 to 608 in 2020.
Criminal gangs are reportedly coordinating their smuggling schemes from the migrants’ home countries right to the shores of France, with payments transferred across borders using an informal money transfer system called the hawala — Arabic for “transfer” — with clients often charged between £4,000 ($5,509) and £10,000 ($13,772) to get to the UK. Notification of where to rendezvous is a little more high-tech, with migrants notified of the details via social media.
Networks of drivers from nearby Belgium and the Netherlands transport materials to France for the crossings, such as boats, fuel cans, and motors, but a number of vessels have come as far away as China, sold via the Jack Ma-owned e-commerce platform Alibaba. The networks of criminal people smugglers are said to stretch from Albania, Iraq, Iran, and Vietnam.
Where smugglers appear hands-off is the steering of the migrants across the English Channel, with the newspaper saying its investigation found that the role was delegated to a fellow illegal, as traffickers attempt to avoid being caught by French authorities.
“The traffickers are running a criminal business and like any enterprise it evolves. The bigger players don’t really want to be seen near the beaches so, if they can, they delegate and pick off individuals to do their dirty work. It is a criminal co-operative which changes shape,” a law enforcement source in France told the i.
Other reports from last year fill on some of the gaps for what happens to the migrants once they land on British shores, particularly those not intercepted by authorities and who otherwise disappear into the black labour market.
A report from September 2020 details French officials claiming that illegals sign a “pact” with trafficking networks to become their “property” and are then sent to work in cannabis farms, restaurants, and other businesses to pay off their debts, which can take “years”, according to prosecutor Pascal Marconville.
This week, it was revealed that more illegal boat migrants landed in the UK last month (over 2,000) than in the whole of 2019 when only 1,890 were recorded to have made it to British shores.
Brexit leader Nigel Farage challenged Home Secretary Priti Patel to visit illegal landing hotspots in Dover and Dungeness and “speak to these people who have to deal with this every single day”. He also criticised lifeboats services being forced to act as a “taxi service” for illegals, saying that British authorities should simply send the boatloads of migrants back to France.
Mr Farage also said that those arriving are not refugees but mostly young, male, economic migrants “pursuing an economic dream” while having “deserted their families from their home countries”, remarking that “many of them will finish up as slaves or working in crime in Britain. We should be ashamed.”