Conservative administrations in the past have not addressed the rise in illegal immigration.
According to official statistics revealed on Sunday, more than 45,000 illegal immigrants entered the UK last year by travelling across the English Channel in tiny boats. As legal action thwarted its plan to send the refugees to Rwanda, Britain tried to pay France to stop the crossings.
On Christmas Day, two boats brought 90 people from the Channel to the UK, bringing the total number of migrants expected to make the journey in 2022 to 45,756, up from 28,395 in 2021. Before New Year’s Day, there were no more crossings noted.
On Sunday, the Ministry of Defense noted
The majority of the migrants since crossings started to increase in 2018 came from Iran, Iraq, and several other Middle Eastern nations. However, Albania, which the British government regards as “safe,” accounted for 42% of all arrivals in the second half of 2022.
Last month, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said that his government would soon be able to house 10,000 migrants in unused vacation parks, student halls, and military bases. However, Britain is currently spending £5.5 million ($6.6 million) every day to house migrants in hotels.
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Sunak has made the same promises to lower the number of people crossing the Channel as his predecessors, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, but so far, none of them have been successful. A pact that Johnson’s home secretary, Priti Patel, signed in April called for Rwanda to accept planeloads of refugees while their applications for asylum were being processed; but, legal action by immigration-friendly NGOs put an end to this plan.
Despite the fact that the High Court upheld the policy in December, legal challenges are still pending, and no planes have yet left the UK. When contacted by the Daily Mail last month, a government official refused to confirm whether any deportations would take place in 2023.
The British government and France reached an agreement in November, according to Home Secretary Suella Braverman, under which the British government would pay the French government $74.5 million per year to increase patrols on the French side of the English Channel. However, despite the signing of three such agreements in the last three years, crossings have continued to rise annually.
Sunak said that the agreement won’t “magically fix” the problem when he spoke after it was signed.
