More than 150,000 illegal migrant boats have landed on British shores since the crisis began in earnest in 2018, with hundreds more crossing the English Channel on Christmas Day and Boxing Day.
data released The Home Office said 451 illegal immigrants arrived on Christmas Day and a further 407 landed on Boxing Day.
According to calculation from telegraph paperThis brings the total number of illegal crossings of waterways recorded since the government began tracking statistics in early 2018 to 150,243.
The actual number may be much higher, given that some may have reached British shores undetected by authorities.
The crisis began gradually in 2018, with just 299 people crossing the Strait illegally, but the route has since increased sharply as smuggling rings and would-be illegal immigrants find it easier to enter the country. .
The following year, 1,843 illegal immigrants were recorded crossing the Channel, 8,466 in 2020, 28,526 in 2021, and 2022 a record year with 45,774 people landing. It became.
Although there was a decrease in 2023 with 29,437 people entering the country, the number of illegal immigrants has started to increase again, with 35,898 people caught entering the country so far this year, an increase of 22% from last year. did.
More than 22,000 foreigners have crossed the Channel to reach the UK since the Labor government took power in July, despite promises to the public to stop the mass influx of illegal immigrants. This exceeds all foreign arrivals in 2018, 2019, and 2019. 2020 combined.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who previously served as Director of Crown Prosecutions, has pinned his hopes on stemming the tide of illegal actors in using law enforcement to “crush” human trafficking gangs operating on both sides of the English Channel. There is. It facilitates immigration and often funnels migrants into Britain's black market economy.
Like the so-called Conservative government before it, the Labor government has so far refused to simply turn the ship back to France and instead have Border Force pick up the migrants in the Channel and take them to Dover. and where immigrants are almost always transported to Dover. Then apply for asylum.
Nigel Farage's British Reform Party said the government should remove the immediate deportation or boat approach to stem the flow of illegal immigrants.
The party has often pointed to the example of former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, whose Operation Sovereign Borders adopted a zero-tolerance approach by immediately sending boats back to their countries of origin or bringing migrants back to Australia. , essentially eliminating illegal boat immigration into the country. A detention center on an offshore island.
Like its Conservative predecessor, the Labor government also refuses to exempt the UK from the European Covenant on Human Rights (ECHR) and its associated courts, which often directly or indirectly prevent deportations from the UK. . Despite leaving the European Union in 2020, Britain is still bound by a Strasbourg-based court. That's because, despite sharing the same flag and anthem as the EU and the same campus as the EU Parliament, it is technically a separate institution. .
As a result of successive governments' effective open-door policies, the UK has become home to the highest number of illegal immigrants in Europe, with research by the University of Oxford showing that there are currently around 745,000 people living in the UK illegally, or around one in every 100 residents. They say there are immigrants. This is more than any other country in Europe and more than double the number of asylum seekers in France.
