The number of boat migrants illegally crossing the English Channel from France has surpassed the yearly record set last year, with more than five months left to go this year.
On Tuesday, another 287 illegal migrants were brought ashore by the British Border Force, adding to the daily record set on Monday when 430 aliens reached the UK.
The latest crossings take the total number this year to approximately 8,474, which is more than the already record-breaking 8,420 crossings which were recorded last year, The Times reported. Further footage reported by ITV showed more boatloads of migrants travelling to southern England on Wednesday. Nigel Farage, who was in the English Channel Wednesday with a camera crew on Wednesday morning, said the Wednesday numbers would comfortably be in the “hundreds”.
Commenting on the growing crisis in the Channel, the chairman of Migration Watch UK told Breitbart London: “We’ve had promise after promise of a crackdown on illegal immigration and yet our law enforcers stand around doing very little as hundreds cross the Channel on a nearly daily basis.
“We don’t need new laws, heralded by tough, if empty, talk. We need a government that is prepared to challenge the compassion-clad open borders industry by actually enforcing our basic border laws.
“The British public are losing their patience.”
Reporting from the middle of the English Channel in front of a dinghy full of migrants, Brexit leader Nigel Farage said: “It’s been a thousand in the last three days, it will be hundreds more today, this is totally out of control, there is nothing Priti Patel has said that will make any difference.”
Reporting that yet again, the French Navy escorted boatloads of migrants into British territorial waters, Mr Farage questioned why the Home Secretary had agreed to send an additional £55 million to the French “for them to act as a taxi service into the UK?”
The Home Office has claimed that the latest payoff, following £28 million sent last November, will be used to increase the area in which French border patrols will surveil.
Yet, like many conservative sceptics in Britain, the MP for Calais, Pierre-Henri Dumont, has also questioned whether the payoff to his government will do anything to stop the waves of illegal migrants as they will “find somewhere else to cross”.
The French MP told the BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “The fact is, having more money, having more police, having more controls will not prevent more crossing attempts. We have too many kilometres of shore to monitor. They can hide in a lot of places, there are a lot of roads, woods and trees.
“So even if you are monitoring 100 per cent of a small or large part of the French coast the smugglers will find somewhere to cross somewhere else. If it’s not Calais they will go to Normandy, if not Normandy then Belgium or the Netherlands.”
The grim record was set as MPs voted to approve Home Secretary Priti Patel’s Nationality and Borders Bill by a margin of 366 to 265. The legislation hopes to deter illegal migration by imposing longer prison sentences for those entering the country illegally and for imposing life sentences for people smugglers.
Any benefits of the bill will not be felt anytime soon, however, as it will take months before it comes into effect. Crucially there has been no will within the Conservative government to take unilateral action and just send migrant boats back to France, as has been advocated by migration hardliners.
Despite forking over another 55 million to the French, the government has failed to convince France or indeed any European nation, with the exception of Albania, to agree to a migrant returns scheme after leaving the EU at the beginning of the year.
Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka
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