The number of illegal migrants that crossed the English Channel in small boats from France in August is more than the entire year of 2020, according to Ministry of Defence figures.
A total of 8,644 illegal migrants were recorded crossing the Channel in August, MoD figures showed. The number is a new monthly record and nearly two hundred more than were recorded than in all of 2020 when 8,466 were brought ashore in Britain.
August also set a new daily record when 1,295 migrants landed on British beaches on the 22nd, four times the number that landed in Britain during the entire year of 2018 when 297 made the perilous journey.
The crossings have taken the total for the year over 25,000, quickly approaching the previous yearly record which was set last year when 28,526 illegals arrived via the busy waterway.
The increased waves of illegal boat migration have been driven in part by other routes closing during the pandemic, but also a massive upswing in the number of Albanians trying to enter the country via the Channel route, with the Home Office claiming that there has been nearly a 1,000 per cent increase of Albanian illegals landing on UK shores compared to last year, with 2,615 arriving in the first half of this year compared to just 23 during the same time frame in 2021, The Times reported.
Security concerns have been raised over reports that deported criminals from the Balkans nation, including violent offenders and drug dealers, have been exploiting the waves of illegal migration to sneak back into the country.
Home Secretary Priti Patel has come to an agreement with her counterparts in Albania — a safe and relatively prosperous country from which there is seemingly little justification to seek asylum from — to conduct biometric criminal background checks on all Albanians that reach the UK.
“It is shameful and absurd that so many Albanian nationals are entering the UK via small boats when their home country, Albania, is a safe country. In 2021 I signed our first ever removals agreement with the government of Albania which covered our joint cooperation on tackling organised criminality, illegal migration and law enforcement issues between our two countries,” Patel said on Wednesday.
“This agreement has enabled me to return Albanian nationals on a weekly basis and their removal will now be fast-tracked under this agreement, in tandem with measures introduced under the Nationality and Borders Act.”
The grim milestone of another illegal migration record being set comes just days before the departure of Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who promised that his government would “take back control” of the nation’s borders following Brexit.
Not only has his administration failed to do so, but it has also failed to remove the UK from the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), which pro-migration lawyers successfully lobbied in June to stop the British government from deporting illegals to Rwanda, which signed a deal earlier this year to hold migrants from processing while their asylum claims are handled.
While the UK left the European Union, the country is still bound by the Strasbourg-based court as it is technically a separate institution, despite being so closely aligned that it shares the same flag and anthem as the bloc.
Despite warnings from Brexit leader Nigel Farage of electoral doom for the Conservative Party in the next general election if the government fails to remove the UK from the court and finally fulfil the promises of Brexit, there has been no indication from either frontrunner Liz Truss or her opponent Rishi Sunak that the government which succeeds Boris Johnson’s will take such action.
Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.