2023-08-14 05:45:04
Migrants rescued at sea by the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, a British charity, arrive in Dover (United Kingdom) after trying to cross the English Channel, August 12, 2023. STUART BROCK / AFP
Last week had been decreed « small boats week » by the British government, which wanted to demonstrate its efforts to end migrant crossings in inflatable boats across the English Channel. It turned into a fiasco.
It began on Tuesday August 8 with the provocations of the vice-president of the Conservative Party, Lee Anderson, who declared that migrants could “get the hell out of France” (« fuck off back to France ») if they did not like the terms offered in the UK. It ended on Saturday August 12 with the sinking off Sangatte, in the Channel, of a boat carrying 65 migrants. Six Afghans drowned. Between the two, taking advantage of the good weather, 1,600 migrants arrived on the English coast between August 10 and 12, a record for this year, crossing the symbolic bar of 100,000 migrants having crossed the Channel since 2018. “Small boat week was a disaster for the Tories”believes Stephen Kinnock, Labor MP, specialist in migration issues.
Since 2014, the port of Calais and the entrance to the Eurotunnel have gradually become inaccessible. Under pressure from the British authorities, France has stepped up patrols and installed barbed wire, infrared cameras, surveillance cameras, CO₂ detectors… The passage of migrants has moved towards the sea crossing, generally on board large inflatable boats. They were 300 to do so in 2018, 2,000 in 2019, 8,500 in 2020, 28,500 in 2021 and 45,700 in 2022. This year, nearly 16,700 have already been detected, down about 15% from to last year at the same time. The majority come from countries at war (Afghanistan, Syria, Iraq, etc.), but strange channels sometimes appear: during the summer of 2022, Albanians briefly represented more than a third of arrivals.
Read also the survey (2022): Article reserved for our subscribers Immigration: survey of the “most prolific” network of “small boats” in Europe
“Stop the Boats”
This very spectacular influx, with its regular dramas, provoked a latent political crisis in the United Kingdom. Among his five priorities for his mandate, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak promised “to stop the boats”.
He is counting on a very tough policy for this. He passed a new law, finally approved by Parliament on July 20, which prohibits any asylum application for people who have entered the United Kingdom illegally. “If people know that if they come here illegally they won’t be able to stay, then they won’t come anymore”, assured Mr. Sunak in June. His government assures that anyone who enters illegally will be “returned quickly, either to their country of origin or to a third country”.
You have 58.71% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.
#United #Kingdom #controversies #helplessness #face #migrants #crossing #Channel