Post-eu law to send migrants back to France
THE Government is planning to bring in laws after Britain leaves the EU to make it easier to return cross-channel migrants to France, Priti Patel has said.
The Home Secretary hopes to replace the current agreement with France and the EU with a legal framework that will allow Britain to return illegal migrants, whether they are caught on sea or land.
The move follows a surge in migrants using small boats to cross the Channel including 1,081 during lockdown. It means 1,560 have arrived in the UK this year, against 1,800 in the whole of 2019.
Yesterday, a total of 64 people in five boats were rescued, including some from a vessel taking on water.
Ms Patel yesterday said the laws would enable the UK “to do much more to enforce the principle that if you come from a safe country, you will be going back to that safe country. You will not be able to claim asylum.”
This is the supposed principle behind the Dublin Regulation that makes any EU country in which an asylum seeker first applies for asylum responsible for processing the claim.
Home Office sources said the agreement was “rigid and restrictive” as it prevented the UK returning migrants who dodged fingerprint and identity checks as they travelled across the EU, often through numerous countries that should have processed them.
Only 155 migrants who arrived on boats between Jan 2019 and early April 2020 were returned to France despite about 2,500 detected arrivals – just six per cent of the total.
Ms Patel said once Britain left the EU it would be free to renegotiate the Dublin agreement and introduce its own immigration laws. “We intend to introduce new laws that look at the whole end-to-end system, including some of the pull factors that exist within our own asylum system right now, but also our immigration system that makes the UK an attractive place to come to,” she told LBC yesterday.
Home Office sources believe the French will be sympathetic to a new treaty to accept returns from sea or land as the only way to deter migrants and drive out gangs of smugglers who prey on them in northern France.
“There is a major, major problem in terms of people coming into France and then trying to get over here,” said Ms Patel.
“We are using drones, we are using helicopters, we are using night vision goggles, you name it, we are using it. The issue that we have is that the amount of beach space being patrolled is vast in France and these individuals [criminal gangs] are using all sorts of tactics – some covert, some overt.”
She said agencies on both sides of the Channel were “working night and day” to halt the number of crossings.
Nigel Farage, the Brexit Party leader, yesterday filmed the rescue of migrants from a boat in the Channel, showing what he claimed were the French escorting them into British waters.
“I just witnessed the French Navy escorting illegal migrants into British waters, despite the money we are paying them,” he said. “Time for the Government to get a grip.”