Most Channel migrants come from Vietnam
Government calls for Lords to support Rwanda deportations Bill as it is sent back to Upper House
MORE Channel migrants have come from Vietnam this year than any other country as the Government urged the Lords to drop their opposition to its Rwanda Bill.
The surge in Vietnamese migrants has been blamed by Downing Street for contributing to the record numbers crossing so far this year. Some 534 people reached the UK on Sunday, the highest in a single day this year. It brought the total this year to 6,265, up 28 per cent on the same point last year and seven per cent up on 2022.
Yesterday, the Prime Minister’s official spokesman cited the “increasing number of Vietnamese” as one reason why the Safety of Rwanda Bill needed to be passed by Parliament to “save the lives of those being exploited by people-smuggling gangs”.
He said: “It’s an unacceptable number of people who continue to cross the Channel and that demonstrates exactly why we must pass this Bill and get flights off the ground as soon as possible and provide the important deterrent that the Bill will provide.” Last night, MPS rejected the Lords’ seven changes to the Bill by majorities of between 59 and 74 votes. This sent the legislation back to the Upper House, where Labour and crossbench peers will mount a fresh attempt today to defeat the Government and send the legislation back to the Commons in a further round of parliamentary “ping pong.”
The number of Vietnamese people crossing the Channel more than doubled last year from 505 in 2022 to 1,323. The rise has continued this year to make them the biggest cohort of Channel migrants with Border Force reporting small boats packed with up to 20 Vietnamese migrants.
Tougher security on lorries and the deaths of 39 Vietnamese migrants in a lorry trailer in Essex in 2019 has seen them divert away from road routes to small boats.
Vietnamese migrants tend to be trafficked by the gangs into nail bars, cannabis farms, restaurants and the sex trade in the UK, which is why the crime bosses have preferred lorries rather than small boats where migrants are likely to be detained by Border Force.
Some have entered Europe via Serbia or Romania on work visas only to find jobs badly paid with poor conditions.
Nusrat Uddin, a trafficking specialist from Wilson Solicitors LLP, said: “Many then travel onwards through Europe, again under the false premise of better conditions elsewhere.” Mimi Vu, an anti-trafficking and modern slavery expert based in Vietnam, said some of the migrants would have paid £15,000 to £20,000 to trafficking gangs.
She said sky-high interest rates of 700 to 1,000 per cent meant migrants trafficked to Europe aimed to repay the debt, send remittances to their families and earn enough to live off.
James Cleverly, the Home Secretary, spoke with his Vietnamese counterpart yesterday as officials from both countries put the finishing touches to a new agreement with Vietnam to curb the flow of migrants from the south-east Asian country.
The Home Office began a social media campaign in Vietnam last month to highlight the risks of crossing the Channel in a small boat. Yesterday, Sir Matthew Rycroft, the top civil servant in the Home Office told MPS that the Rwanda scheme – costing at least £370 million – would only deliver “value for money” if it succeeded in reducing the number of migrants crossing by a third. That would mean 10,000 fewer than the 29,437 last year.
Officials admitted there were currently 40,000 Channel migrants “in limbo” whose asylum claims had been declared inadmissible under the Illegal Migration Act and should have been removed to Rwanda but had not been.