David Wood:
The best way to stop the Channel crossings and save lives is to return the illegal immigrants to France
The rise in the number of migrants attempting to reach the UK via the English Channel in small boats and dinghies is a worrying trend. Comparisons with migrant activity in the Mediterranean are unavoidable and the Channel crossings, while currently limited in scale, are at risk of escalating in the same way.
As with the Mediterranean route, facilitators are paid to organise these crossings, and will resort to even less seaworthy vessels as the certainty of the migrants being “rescued” at sea increases. The profits of the organised crime groups thus grow as more migrants reach the UK. The criminals are then motivated to expand their lucrative trade.
The Home Secretary has agreed to ramp up cooperation with his French counterpart, focused on “prevention, monitoring and patrols”. This is welcome, assuming that the subsequent measures are serious. The French authorities have never effectively policed the organised crime and illegal immigration issues surrounding the Channel crossings. Migrants seeking access to the UK are invariably also illegal entrants to France but little or no action is taken. They do not investigate the criminals involved, which leads to open advertising for migrant customers by crime groups in the Calais area.
That is not to say there haven’t been failings on the UK side. Britain used to patrol its coast with five cutters, but there has apparently been only one performing that function in the past few weeks, and Sajid Javid yesterday announced the redeployment of two from overseas to the Channel.
Border Force also used to have mobile border officers who visited small ports and airports; austerity has seen these resources greatly reduced, too.
Once intercepted, the migrants are brought to the UK where practically all will claim asylum. If the resources are available, a short screening interview takes place and the migrants are asked to report to an Immigration Centre. That interview will not necessarily be adequate to detect the risks posed by the migrant and there is no certainty that the details provided are correct.
While some migrants will follow the asylum process through, others will just disappear. Moreover, whether successful or not in their application, they are very unlikely to be deported, and, if Iranian, will certainly not be as the Iranian government refuses to document their nationals for returns. All will have destroyed their documentation.
Furthermore, the majority of migrants attempting to cross the Channel will not be fleeing persecution or war. They will have paid substantial sums to make the crossing and are more likely to be economic migrants seeking a better life for themselves and their families. The organised crime groups will tell the migrants how to answer questions to evade deportation.
So, what can be done?
The extra cutters will be important, as preserving life is paramount. But the difficulty, acknowledged by the Home Office, is that this could attract more crossings in less seaworthy vessels as the migrants know they can rely on being rescued, with the authorities providing a taxi service to the UK. The other difficulty is how the Home Office traditionally reacts to such a crisis, by diverting resources from other priority areas. There is no fat left in the system and such behaviour only increases vulnerabilities elsewhere.
Deploying more rescue ships may therefore be counter-productive unless accompanied by an agreement with the French to return the migrants to France. France is a safe country where the needs of migrants can be catered for. The French must recognise that fatalities in the Channel will impact on them as well as, if not more than, the UK. Consistent application of such returns would quickly and effectively stop the crossings as migrants would not pay for a hazardous journey doomed to failure and the organised crime groups would fail to attract customers. Most critically, lives would be saved.
There should also be pressure placed on the French to tackle the organised criminality and to police the embarkation locations where the dinghies are quickly identifiable.
It is natural to sympathise with migrants whose drive for a better life leads to them taking such risks. Indeed, there are people who believe we should welcome them. The reality is that such an approach would amount to an open borders policy and there would not be widespread support among the public for that.
These migrants are risking their lives, gaining illegal entry to the UK and supporting organised crime. And the criminals use the funds for other criminal and potentially terrorist activity. We need to reduce the risk to the migrants, create an effective end to this practice and starve organised crime of this source of funding.
David Wood is a former director general of immigration enforcement at the Home Office and is currently an executive director at BGS. His paper ‘Controlling Britain’s Borders’ is published by Civitas on Jan 12