Brexit leader Nigel Farage has predicted that “at least 60,000” will land on British beaches in 2022 as the first illegals came ashore since the start of the year adding to last year’s banner year.
In 2021, a record 28,381 boat migrants crossed the Channel from France, more than three times as many landed in the prior year.
The furious pace of illegal crossings only looks to continue, with 66 migrants being brought ashore at Dover on Monday, representing the first migrant landings of the year, The Times reported. According to calculations made by the paper, an average of 78 migrants reached the UK by boat every day last year.
Brexit leader Nigel Farage, who nearly predicted the exact number of migrant crossings last year, said that the rate will only climb, warning that “at least 60,000” migrants will cross in 2022 and that it could reach as much as 80,000 boat migrants landing in Britain.
Commenting on the latest crossings, Mr Farage said that the people smugglers who traffic migrants across the Channel from beaches in France have become increasingly “professional”, noting that they appear to have a deep understanding of wind and tide patterns.
Mr Farage said that there was a “very tight weather window” on Monday for crossings, saying that the human traffickers amassed the migrants on the beaches of Dunkirk and waited until the wind dropped to around 10 miles per hour, as the crossing becomes more dangerous when wind reaches speeds of 15mph or more.
“It doesn’t matter what penalty you put on the traffickers, if the incentive is there for those that want to come and pay their 3-5,000 euros — whatever the going rate is at the time — they’ll go on coming,” he said.
The Brexiteer went on to predict that the continuing migrant crisis will become “catastrophic” political issue for Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who he said is too “lily livered” and doesn’t have “the guts” to shut down the migrant route for fear of condemnation from the international community.
He said that Red Wall voters, many of whom switched from the Labour Party to vote for Johnson in 2019 in order to get Brexit done, did so because they believed in taking back control of the nation’s borders.
“I honestly don’t think Boris Johnson’s government will do anything,” he said.
Monday’s boat migrant arrivals were the first since 36 landed on December 27th, following a record high of 67 crossing the English Channel on Christmas day.
It is unlikely that the migrant situation will ease up anytime soon, with many of the proposed powers laid out in the upcoming Nationality and Borders bill, such as possible offshore asylum seeker holding centres, being far away from actual implementation.
It is also doubtful that Britain will be able to come to an agreement with France — where the vast majority of boat migrants set off from — in light of the upcoming French presidential election in April. Even after the election, it remains to be seen if the French will agree to having migrants sent back from the UK.
Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.