Over 150,000 Illegal Migrants Have Landed in Britain Since Crisis Began

Over 150,000 illegal boat migrants have landed on British shores since the crisis began in earnest in 2018 as hundreds more crossed the English Channel on Christmas and Boxing Day.

Data released from the Home Office showed that 451 illegals arrived on Christmas Day and a further 407 landed on Boxing Day.

According to calculations from The Telegraph, this takes the total number of recorded illegal crossings of the waterway to 150,243 since the government began tracking statistics at the beginning of 2018.

The true number may in fact be higher given that others may have reached British shores without being detected by authorities.

While the crisis began with a trickle in 2018, with just 299 illegal arrivals over the Channel, the route then saw an exponential rise as people smuggler gangs and prospective illegal aliens began to realise the ease at which they could break into the country.

The following year, 1,843 illegals were recorded crossing the Channel, followed by 8,466 in 2020, then 28,526 in 2021, culminating in a record year in 2022 when 45,774 landed.

Although there was a decline in 2023, when 29,437 arrived, the number of illegal crossings has once again started to rise, with 35,898 arrivals detected so far this year, a 22 per cent jump over last year.

Despite making promises to the public that they would put a stop to the massive influx of illegals, over 22,000 aliens have reached the UK by crossing the Channel since the Labour Party government took power in July, more than all arrivals in 2018, 2019, and 2020 combined.

Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, who previously served as the head of the Crown Prosecution Service, has pinned his hopes of stemming the tide of illegals on using law enforcement to “smash” the human trafficking gangs, which operate on both sides of the English Channel in facilitating crossings and often funnel migrants into black market economies in Britain.

Like the so-called Conservative governments which preceded it, the Labour government has so far refused to simply turn back the boats to France, instead opting to have the Border Force pick migrants up in the Channel and take them to Dover, where they almost always then apply for asylum.

Nigel Farage’s Reform UK party has argued that the government should adopt immediate deportations or a turn back the boats approach to disrupt the flow of illegals.

The party has often pointed to the example of former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, whose Operation Sovereign Borders essentially eliminated illegal boat migration to the country by taking a zero tolerance approach, by either immediately sending boats back to their country of origin or bringing migrants to offshore island detention centres.

Like their Tory predecessors, the Labour government has also refused to remove Britain from the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) and its associated court, which often directly or indirectly prevents deportations from Britain. The UK is still bound by the Strasbourg-based court despite leaving the European Union in 2020 as it is technically a separate institution, though it does share the same flag and anthem as the EU, as well as sharing the same campus as the EU Parliament.

The effective open door policies of successive governments resulted in the UK becoming the home to the most illegal migrants in Europe, with a study from Oxford University finding that there are currently around 745,000 illegals in Britain or around one in 100 residents. This is more than any other nation in Europe and more than double the number of asylum seekers in France.

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