The number of illegal migrants that have crossed the English Channel since the start of the year has surpassed 20,000 despite Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s insistence that the government’s strategy to stop the boats “is working”.
On Tuesday, six small boats carrying around 400 migrants were intercepted and brought ashore by the British Border Force, taking the total to approximately 20,200 since January.
This, according to calculations made by The Telegraph, is 21 per cent lower than last year when 25,000 had reached the UK via the English Channel, leading to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak dubiously declaring that his government’s policies have worked in slowing the migrant crisis.
“This year for the first time the numbers of people crossing are lower than the year before. That hasn’t happened before. That shows that the plan is working. Of course, there’s more to do, but I want people to have confidence that we are on it, and we’ll keep going,” the Tory politician told reporters during a visit to Norfolk on Tuesday.
However, Channel observers including Brexit leader Nigel Farage, have been critical of Sunak for trying to take credit for the slight reduction in crossings, noting that poor weather conditions over the past two months in the waterway have likely done more to deter people smugglers than any government action.
With the government’s main strategy — plans to send illegal boat migrants to Rwanda to have their asylum claims processed offshore rather than putting them up in hotels across the UK — remaining in limbo after a series of legal challenges were launched by pro-mass migration lawyers and activist groups, the government has sought to hold migrants in floating barges off the coast of the UK.
This, however, has also yet to materialise and even if it does go ahead, will likely not be sufficient to hold a significant number of migrants, regardless.
The main policy that the government could feasibly credit with a reduction in crossings of the Channel would be the half-a-billion payoff to France to step up enforcement against people smugglers operating in areas such as Calais.
Despite the latest handout to Paris, the French government has remained unwilling to work with London in crafting a post-Brexit returns policy for those who set sail from France to the UK, with President Emmanuel Macron maintaining that such an agreement needs to be struck at the EU level.
Yet, it seems that Brussels has no interest in a returns deal, with Eurocrats apparently content to shift the costs of their open borders policies off onto Britain. Thus, the government has only managed to return a grand total of two migrants back to European Union nations since last year.
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