Amid the recent spate of warm weather in the English Channel, thousands of prospective illegal boat migrants have amassed in Northern France to prepare to make the perilous journey to British shores.
With illegal boat migration to the UK hitting record highs, surpassing both the yearly and daily records last week alone, thousands more migrants are gathering to cross the English Channel.
Approximately 2,000 migrants have gathered near the beaches of northern France, The Times of London reported.
So far this year, over 9,000 have successfully reached the UK by crossing the Channel in rubber dinghies launched from French beaches in the first seven months of 2021. This is more than the entirety of 2020, which previously set the annual record when approximately 8,410 arrived.
The latest crossings came after the UK agreed to send an additional £54.2 million to the French to step up border patrols. This is on top of the £28 million handout that the British taxpayer sent to France last November.
Responding to the failure of the government to stem the tide of illegal migration Brexit leader Nigel Farage said on his new primetime show on GB News: “I think Priti Patel — who has got away ever since august 2019 with making tough speeches and the conservative media and the Tory backbenchers saying isn’t she wonderful — I think Priti Patel is beginning to get onto pretty thin ice.”
“It’s clear that a country that voted to take back control of its borders has completely and hopelessly lost control of its borders.”
Taking advantage of Britain’s unwillingness to adopt a send back the boats approach in the Channel, the ineffectiveness of the French border patrols, and France’s navy frequently escorting migrants into British territorial waters, the people smuggling gangs have been upping their efforts.
The human trafficking gangs have begun using larger rubber dinghies, often held together in a makeshift manner, to hold in some instances over 80 people.
It has also been reported by the Daily Mail that Albanian traffickers have been advertising their services on social media sites, such as the Chinese-owned Tik Tok, offering migrants passage to the UK for as much as £20,000 per person.
It has been suggested that the exorbitant fees being charged by the people-smuggling gangs demonstrates that many of the illegal migrants are not in fact refugees, but rather economic migrants looking to benefit from the prosperity and freedom in Britain.
Commenting on the matter, Nigel Farage said on Monday that “very few of those that are coming would ever actually qualify” for refugee status.
“The argument may well be that they come from countries that are poorer than us, they come from countries that have been torn apart by war. All of that may be true, but then if you look at the (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees), they say there are nearly 70 million people in that category.”
“We can’t just say to people because the country who comes from is poorer than us,” the Brexit leader noted.
Mr Farage also questioned why it is that the migrants have left behind their women and children, pointing to the fact that the overwhelming majority of boat migrants coming to Britain are young fighting-age men.
“What we are witnessing here is economic migration and for many of these people of course they’ll finish up effectively living in the slave trade in this country — something that nobody ever seems to want to talk about.”
Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka
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