The European Union has reported baulked at calls from Britain to accept the return of illegal migrants who cross the English Channel from France, leading Conservative politicians to accuse the bloc of trying to punish the UK for Brexit.
Over three years after the United Kingdom officially left the EU, Brussels is reportedly continuing to refuse to come to a deal on the readmission of illegal migrants who crossed through the continent before sailing on to British shores. That the bloc won’t even consider negotiation on the topic shows how “incompetent and immoral” the Union is, a top Brexiteer said.
While the EU has been somewhat willing to come to the negotiating table in terms of trade arrangements, it has been intransigent when it comes to accepting migrant returns, reportedly upon the urging of the French government — who may believe they would have the most to lose from any such deal — despite the UK recently agreeing to a payoff of over £500 million to step up enforcement against people smuggling and Channel crossings.
According to a report from the Daily Mail, a meeting between the head of EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen’s cabinet, Bjoern Siebert and British National Security Advisor Sir Tim Barrow earlier this year resulted in the UK being told that the bloc has no intention of coming to an agreement on migrant returns.
A British memo following the meeting seen by the paper said that Siebert “stressed that the Commission is not open to a UK-EU readmissions agreement.”
Although Brussels has disputed the veracity of the contents of the memo, leading Conservatives have taken it as further indication that the EU is attempting to punish Britain for leaving the bloc.
Former government minister Peter Bone said that he believed it was “reasonable” to think that it is an act of punishment for Brexit, saying: “There is no other logical reason for doing it… If they had a returns framework these crossings would not happen. People would not be clogging up the French ports. It would stop the people-smugglers, it would make life in the French ports so much better.”
“The idea they can say ‘we’re not going to do anything about it’ just shows how incompetent and immoral the EU are on this issue, because they are allowing this to happen,” he said noting that migrants wouldn’t risk their lives if there was a returns policy.
“If there was a returns policy people wouldn’t risk their lives in the Channel because they would know all that would happen is they go back to where they started from.
“If I was PM when they landed in Dover I would give them a nice cup of tea and put them on the first ferry back to France,” he said.
Another former government minister, David Jones pointed to the French government in particular for holding up progress on a returns deal, saying: “This very French attitude is permeating the whole of the EU. We had the temerity to leave the EU and we must be punished for it. The French are really not doing enough, bearing in mind that they are getting £500 million from us now.”
He argued that the British government should work to “disapply the ECHR in domestic legislation.” The ECHR (European Convention of Human Rights) is technically a separate agreement from the European Union and therefore Britain’s membership was unaffected by Brexit. The Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights, which makes judgements on the ECHR, controversially intervened last year to block a British deportation flight of illegals to the African nation of Rwanda, which has agreed to host alleged asylum seekers who come into Britain illegally.
There have been growing calls for the UK to leave the agreement, however, it is still not even a sure thing that the government’s Rwanda scheme would go ahead regardless, given that the judiciary in Britain has still refused to give the plan the green light over a year after it was first announced. UK courts, much like those in Europe, have a long history of siding with illegal migrants, foreign criminals, and even terrorists in deportation battles.
Meanwhile, it appears that the British government is expecting the migrant crisis in the English Channel to continue for the foreseeable future, with a leaked memo revealing over the weekend that the Home Office is currently considering using former prisons and military bases to house illegal boat migrants for upwards of the next five years.
Even still, it appears that people smuggling networks are looking for other means of transporting illegals into the country, with The Telegraph reporting that Albanian gangs are advertising on Tik Tok safe passage on the backs of lorries from Santander in northern Spain to the coastal port city of Portsmouth. The smugglers are reported charging some £14,000 per migrant, more than four times the average for passage in small boats, however, it appears that the increased levels of safety and the likelihood of being able to enter the country undetected is worth it to the migrants.
“If they arrive on a small boat, they know that they are likely to be sent back to Albania,” an immigration investigator told The Telegraph.
“They know their asylum claim will be refused so they don’t register with the Home Office. In order to pay the huge sum of money for getting into the UK, many get involved in cannabis farms.”
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