Migrants Pouring Across the English Channel
Illegal immigrants are pouring across the English Channel in small boats and hundreds being brought to shore even after being intercepted by the authorities.
Statistics released to House of Commons Home Affairs Select Committee by Sir Philip Rutnam, permanent secretary at Sajid Javid’s Home Office, revealed that 739 migrants were discovered between January 2018 and February 2019, 135 of whom made landfall without being intercepted.
Illegal migration from France is very difficult to combat, as European Union rules made it difficult to simply send migrants back to the last safe country they were in — almost always France, in the case of Channel migrants — as its Dublin asylum regulations require countries receiving migrants to instead send illegals back to the very first EU member-state they entered, and to keep them if this cannot be determined.
More than 50 migrants have been found in the English Channel travelling towards the UK during the weekend.
Two more incidents were reported involving 32 migrants off the Kent coast on Sunday, the Home Office said, after 20 were found in boats on Saturday.
At 4am on Sunday, Border Force was alerted to a small boat heading towards Dover, the Home Office said.
A Home Office spokesperson said: “Anyone crossing the Channel in a small boat is taking a huge risk with their life and the lives of their children.
“It is an established principle that those in need of protection should claim asylum in the first safe country they reach, and since January more than 25 people who arrived illegally in the UK in small boats have been returned to Europe.”
Yes, you read that right, "more than 25" people who arrived here illegally have been sent back after flouting our laws. That is less than 1/15th of the people that entered our country illegally by boat in January and February alone.