Over 1,800 Illegal Boat Migrants Land in Britain over Past Week Despite Starmer’s Vow to ‘Smash the Gangs’

More than 1,800 illegal boat migrants crossed the English Channel from France over the past week despite continued promises from the leftist Labour Party government to stem the tide.

According to Home Office figures, between November 4th and November 10th, 1,806 illegal aliens landed on British shores after crossing the Channel in 30 people smuggler-operated boats launched from the Calais coast.

On Saturday, 572 illegals were taken in at Dover, while another 209 arrived the following day.

The PA News agency calculated that nearly 33,000 illegal crossings of the Channel have occurred since the start of the year, an increase of 22 per cent over last year.

However, they remain lower than in the record-setting year of 2022, when nearly 40,000 arrived at this point in the year.

The timing of the latest two thousand illegal arrivals undercut Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s week-long attempt to highlight his fledgeling government’s efforts to clamp down on illegal migration.

In the migrant week media blitz—a typical tactic used by British governments to try to convince the public that they are actually addressing pressing problems—Starmer announced an additional £75 million for his scheme to “smash the gangs” operating the people smuggling trade on both sides of the Channel.

The prosecutor-turned-PM told the Interpol general assembly in Glasgow that his government would also begin to “treat people smugglers like terrorists”.  The left-wing leader also said that London has agreed to increase intelligence sharing with countries such as Kosovo, North Macedonia, and Serbia.

The government has faced continued criticism for failing to simply send boats back to the beaches of France. Nigel Farage’s populist Reform UK party, for example, has long argued that Britain should follow the ‘turn-back-the-boats’ example set by former Australian PM Tony Abbott with his Operation Sovereign Borders, which successfully stopped illegal boat migration from countries like Indonesia.

In one of his first acts as prime minister, Sir Keir also abandoned the scheme developed by previous Conservative governments to send illegals to processing centres in the African nation of Rwanda rather than allowing them to remain in the country while their asylum claims are processed.

To deal with the ever-growing backlog of asylum claims — as more illegals land in the country and claim to be refugees — the Starmer government is reportedly set to fast-track approval for migrants from Afghanistan, Iran, and Syria to be given legal residence.

Meanwhile, the number of people referred to the British government as potentially being victims of modern slavery within the country rose to a record 4,758 in September, The Telegraph reported last week.

This was 15 per cent higher than during the same quarter last year, in large part as a result of increased numbers of Vietnamese illegals, who now represent the largest numbers of any ethnic group illegally crossing the English Channel. Previously, Vientmase aliens typically arrived illegally in lorries. However, the death of 39 Vietnamese in the back of a lorry in 2019 led to stricter checks.

Once in Britain, many from the Southeast Asian country are funnelled by traffickers into black market trades such as prostitution or cannabis farms.

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