Stop this migrant taxi service in the English Channel
DITHERING seems to be the default mode of our enfeebled Government. A mood of timidity and impotence prevails about so many issues facing our country, from Brexit to knife crime.
The same weakness can be seen in the disturbing crisis over migrant boats in the English Channel. Due to prolonged inaction by British and French authorities, the problem appears to be escalating.
At least 220 people, almost all of them Iranian, have tried to make the crossing to the English coast since November, though the Immigration Services trade union puts the total far higher, at 450 to 500.
Whatever the true number, the traffic is fuelled by a growing criminal racket in northern France, where migrants pay up to £10,000 each for smugglers to take them across the hazardous waters of the Channel.
So serious is this crisis that beleaguered Home Secretary Sajid Javid not only declared “a major incident” but has also cut short his family holiday in South Africa and returned to London so he can oversee the Government’s response.
But his new pose of energetic determination is undermined by the reality that he and the Cabinet have contributed to the emergency through their lassitude, as graphically demonstrated by the failure to have any proper border enforcement in the Channel.
Despite the surge in migrant boats, just one of the Border Force’s five cutters has been deployed in the Straits of Dover, and even this vessel is said to have docked in the port of Ramsgate for at least six hours on Saturday, leaving one of the world’s busiest shipping routes entirely unpatrolled by any British guards.
With some justification, Xavier Bertrand, the head of the Hauts de France Regional Council asked at the weekend: “When will there be proper surveillance of the Channel? When will truly firm action be taken against people smugglers on the British side?”
The French, though, are hardly blameless. Once again, just as happened with the notorious jungle camp at Calais, they have allowed the problem to fester in their midst. After all, the traffickers are operating on their territory.
Apart from institutional paralysis, there are other factors at work. Inevitably, one is the European Union’s addiction to free movement and the obliteration of national borders, which enables even illegal migrants to travel easily across the continent.
Many of those eager to reach Britain are reported to have begun their European odyssey by flying from Tehran to Serbia, which introduced visa-free travel for Iranians this year in an effort to boost tourism.
BECAUSE of widespread abuses, the scheme ended in October, but not before 40,000 Iranians had gone to the Balkan state. Perhaps more crucial is Britain’s reputation as a “soft touch” for immigration, both through indiscriminate welfare and the lack of effective controls. In the past year alone, 625,000 immigrants settled here, a colossal and unsustainable influx. And contrary to all the fashionable propaganda about migration’s role as an engine of prosperity, just 38 per cent of those arrivals said they were looking for work. The ideologues who support this social revolution denounce any attempts to get tougher on immigration, shrieking about “xenophobia” and “bigotry”.
But there is nothing progressive about a softly softly approach when it comes to illegal boats in the Channel.
In truth, such a policy entices migrants to put their lives at risk. It also encourages collusion with organised crime. It is amazing that there has not yet been a tragedy off the coast.
A muscular strategy is not cruel but humane. That is why the Government must be more robust, although there is sadly little sign of that from the Home Office.
Yesterday, in another indicator of ministerial helplessness, Sajid Javid wailed that “there is no easy answer to this complex problem”. His colleague Caroline Nokes, the immigration minister, was just as pathetic when she declared that more patrols in the Channel “might act as a magnet, encouraging people to cross”.
But that will only happen if the British agencies act as a quasi taxi service for migrants, ferrying them to shore from halfway across the Channel.
If the Government did its proper job, then our maritime forces could engage in real deterrence. In practice, that would mean turning back the boats at sea, or returning rescued migrants to France, which is exactly where any claims for asylum should be processed.
After all, France is a perfectly civilised, democratic country, that any genuine refugee would welcome as a safe haven.
I‘For inspiration, cast your eyes to Australia’
F MINISTERS are looking for inspiration, they should cast their eyes to Australia, which had a similar problem until 2013 when its government not only established a strong naval cordon around its northwest coast, but also stipulated that no asylum claim would be accepted from any migrant who arrived by boat. The action worked. Attempted crossings and deaths at sea dropped dramatically.
It is not immoral for any nation to uphold its own integrity or decide who has the right to live in its territory.
On the contrary, that is the essence of democratic sovereignty. Britain does not owe the rest of the world a living.
A more robust strategy in the Channel should be the cue for the establishment of a postBrexit immigration system that really meets our national interests, instead of the destructive dogma of virtue-signalling globalists and fake humanitarians.