It’s summer, the English Channel calm, ‘ideal’ weather for an attempted crossing. And so the migrants continue to come hoping, perhaps to be picked up in the Channel and brought safely to land. The English Channel is nonetheless one of the busiest waterways in the world with ferries crossing from the Kent ports to France and Belgium and shipping passing north and south heading to or from major ports such as Felixstowe, Antwerp and Rotterdam. Small boats will always be at risk.
In 2021 the number of people who risked crossing in small boats was 28,526 of whom 45 died or went missing. By July this year around 40,000 had made the crossing with 60,000 forecast to do so by the end of the year. There will, of course be others – some boats land undetected, other boats are detected but the number of migrants is not known, others come on larger craft, some stow away in trucks etc.
Migrants have been attempting to enter the UK from camps in northern France around Calais and Dunkirk in particular for quite some years. During my final years working on Channel Tunnel rail freight in 2001-4, I remember the disruption and damage caused to our business by migrants attempting to board freight trains at Frethun, the terminal through which all rail freight traffic had to pass at the French end of the Channel Tunnel. Eventually, the problem was brought under control as far as rail freight traffic was concerned. However, the migrants did not just ‘go away’. The numbers may have ebbed and flowed, but they have continued to come.
Most migrants are genuinely fleeing war, violence or persecution. In the year to March 2022 three quarters of people seeking asylum in Britain were granted it. Others may be so-called ‘economic migrants’ fleeing poverty and destitution. That may not make them ‘refugees’ in the eyes of the law, but it is not surprising that people should want to migrate in the hope of finding better lives.
As readers of In-touch will know, the UK government’s response is what Home Secretary Priti Patel has described as a ‘world-leading’ scheme to send ‘illegal’ migrants to Rwanda for settlement. This, it is said will discourage migrants from using illegal means to enter the UK and attack the people smugglers’ business model. I confess I have sometimes wondered why, if the aim really is to break the people smugglers’ business model, the government doesn’t simply charter a ferry to bring the migrants across. I know it’s not really a practical solution, but it would deny the smugglers their ‘market’.
Opinion polls suggest people in the UK are split on the Rwanda policy with around 42-45% of people questioned being in favour and a similar percentage against. There is however, a clear split along party lines – about 70% of people who said they voted Conservative at the last election were in favour while a similar percentage of Labour voters were opposed.
In truth, breaking the cross-channel people smuggling networks is not easy. The French police have recently beefed up its presence along the coast and has installed thermal cameras near beaches to detect people. However, with 130 miles of varied coastline to cover they are still thinly stretched. In addition, the smugglers adopt tactics to outwit the police such as stationing observers near the beaches to map police patrol patterns and organising mass launchings to overwhelm officers. Some simply move farther along the coast.
People smuggling operations are much more dispersed than other organised crime rackets such as drug smuggling. The latter is dominated by competing gangs who are tightly controlled from the top. People-smuggling is a much more dispersed and collaborative effort with smaller groups each undertaking part of the overall operation. Some parts of the operation are perfectly legal – there is nothing obviously illegal about purchasing an inflatable boat, although buying a lot of them might raise suspicions. Some parts are organised by migrants themselves. People often run out of money during their journeys and can earn enough to continue by working for the people smugglers. This makes them unwilling to pass on information when they are eventually picked up. When the boats are finally launched, they are steered by the migrants themselves.
All this makes it very difficult to break up the people smuggling networks. Some success was achieved recently in a major police operation coordinated across several countries. However, this underscores the dispersion and complexity of the networks involved. It is likely that all this explains the government’s decision to try its ‘novel’ solution of sending would-be asylum seekers to another ‘safe’ country, ie Rwanda.
In principle, stopping people using illegal routes or means does not sound unreasonable. After all, would it not be better if they used legal means to enter the UK? That begs the question as to what legal routes are available to would-be asylum seekers. The answer is precious few. Apart from some special schemes to re-settle Afghans who served the British and Ukrainians fleeing Putin’s war, it is very difficult to find one. According to the gov.uk website, asylum claims may be rejected if:
- The applicant has passed through another ‘safe’ country en route to the UK where they could have applied for asylum.
- The applicant has a closer connection to another ‘safe’ country than the UK.
In effect, an asylum seeker would have to fly direct to the UK from an ‘unsafe’ country (or arrive direct by sea) to avoid the first and have no relations or connections in any other ‘safe’ country to avoid the second. Since airlines must check that people have the right, or visas to enter the UK before they allow people on board, flying direct is not necessarily so easy even if direct flights exist. All EU countries are regarded as ‘safe’ so anyone arriving from France is at risk of rejection.
Looking at the very limited routes available to migrants, the overall impression is that the UK government does not really want to accept asylum seekers. It will do the minimum is it obliged to do under international conventions but that’s all. However, as noted above, in the year to March 2022 about three quarters of asylum seekers were granted permission to stay. Clearly the system is not quite as ‘hostile’ in practice as it first appears.
The government’s dilemma is that it declared that it would ‘take back control’ of our borders following Brexit. The continual arrival of migrants across the Channel undermines that objective. Furthermore, the ‘points system’ set up for people wishing to come to the UK to live and work clearly has little relevance to people fleeing war, persecution or simple economic deprivation.
An alternative to trying hard-line tactics and schemes to deter migrants, the government could expand the legal routes open to them. One approach would involve setting up a humanitarian visa scheme so that people would not have to resort to the people smugglers to get into the country. However, that would mean accepting that seeking to control the flow is preferable to trying to keep them out (or throw them out) once they have got here.
People decide to flee their home countries for a variety of reasons - war, persecution, political instability and poverty being chief among them. The withdrawal of the international community from Afghanistan following that country’s takeover by the Taliban has had the predicted effect of increasing migration. War in Ukraine only added to the numbers.
Supporting people in their own countries so that they have less reason to leave is another possible approach. That is about supporting economic development and political stability in those countries. However, moves to cut the UK’s overseas development budget seem to go in the opposite direction.
The looming impact of climate change adds to the list of reasons why people up sticks and leave their own countries. Should parts of the world become virtually uninhabitable because of climate change we can expect growing numbers of people to start moving. Many can be expected to move north from poor countries in the Sahel and other regions towards Europe including the UK. In other words, the ‘problem’ of migration is not going to stop any time soon and, if anything, is likely to get worse.
‘Solving’ the problem of migration is no easy task however it is approached. In the back of my mind, however are the words of Christ in Matthew 25:36
“For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink. I was a stranger and you invited me in.”
Perhaps, that should be our starting point.