The number of illegal migrants crossing the English Channel from French coasts this year hit a new record on Monday, with Reform leader Nigel Farage declaring that Chancellor Rishi Sunak “cannot stop the boats”.
A total of 882 illegal migrants reached British shores safely on Monday after crossing the Channel in 15 small boats operated by smuggling rings off the French coast.
Monday’s arrivals were the highest this year, bringing the total since January to 12,313. according to Calculation from Daily Mail.
The paper noted that this figure is an 18% increase from the 10,472 cases at the same time last year and a 5% increase from the 11,690 cases at the same time in 2022.
This means that this year is currently on pace to surpass the annual record set in 2022, when 45,774 migrants arrived on boats in the country.
In response to the continuing wave of illegal immigrants entering the UK, Reform Party leader Nigel Farage Said“Rishi can’t stop the ship and Labour doesn’t care. This is a national security emergency.”
Chancellor Rishi Sunak has tried to claim that his policies are responsible for the fall in illegal immigration seen last year, when 29,437 migrants entered via the busy waterway, but the rise in illegal immigration this year supports claims by Nigel Farage and the BBC that the fall in illegal immigration seen in 2023 is more likely to be due to weather.
Sunak is pinning his hopes on curbing the smuggling trade with a long-delayed scheme built under Boris Johnson’s government that would send illegal immigrants to the East African country of Rwanda to have their asylum claims processed overseas, rather than putting them up in British hotels at taxpayer expense and waiting for a decision.
Former government minister says illegal immigrants are costing UK taxpayers £14 billion a year to public serviceshttps://t.co/rV48qxgtDz
—Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) May 8, 2024
But despite already paying £240 million to Rwanda, not a single migrant flight has departed and the plan has become embroiled in a controversial legal battle both at home and abroad, with the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) stepping in to block the first flight, scheduled for summer 2022.
Britain left the European Union in 2020, but its membership status is unaffected because the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights is technically a separate institution. Sunak’s election manifesto said he would consider leaving the ECHR if he was re-elected if it harmed national security, but critics, including Nigel Farage, say the government should already leave the court and that his Reform party has vowed to do so if it comes to power.
Reformists say the UK should withdraw from the Strasbourg court and also want a turn-the-ships approach to halt the Channel crisis.
Reform candidate for Wellingborough and Rushden Ben Habib appears on Talk TV this week Said The UK should create a special boat migrant unit equipped with sensors, drones, fast boats and well-trained experts to immediately intercept and return any boats that leave from the French coast.
Habib said the current system helps traffickers: the French navy typically tracks migrant boats into British waters where it hands them over to the UK Border Force or the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI), which acts as a “taxi service” to take them to the beach at Dover.
Farage: French navy ‘working for human traffickers’ by helping migrants cross the English Channelhttps://t.co/2yXiNjIdVK
—Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) April 24, 2024
